Soybean

How to spell soybean

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce soybean

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does soybean mean?

1. nounAn edible bean from an East Asian legume plant, widely grown for its oil, protein, and use in foods such as tofu and animal feed.

Soybean in a sentence

• The farmer sold his entire soybean crop to a local processor.

• Soybean oil is a common ingredient in processed foods.

Where does soybean come from?

Language of origin: Japanese

This is a compound of 'soy' and 'bean'. The first element traces back to the Japanese word 'shoyu', the name for the salty fermented sauce made from these beans; Dutch traders carried the product and its name to Europe in the seventeenth century, where it was reshaped into 'soy'. The second element, 'bean', is a thoroughly native English word descended from the Old English 'bean', a general term for broad beans and similar edible seeds long before the plant from East Asia arrived. English speakers fused the two into 'soybean' in the nineteenth century to name the actual plant and its seed, distinct from the sauce. A common point of confusion is that British and Commonwealth writers often prefer 'soya' or 'soya bean', while 'soybean' as a single closed word is especially favoured in agricultural and American usage.

How the word is built

• soy (from Japanese shoyu, soy sauce)
• bean (edible seed, from Old English bean)