Vanilla

How to spell vanilla

7 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce vanilla

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does vanilla mean?

1. nounA sweet, fragrant flavouring made from the pods of a tropical orchid, used widely in baking and ice cream.
2. adjectiveHaving no special or unusual features; plain, standard, or ordinary.

Vanilla in a sentence

• noun

  The recipe calls for a teaspoon of pure vanilla extract.

• adjective

  The team chose a vanilla software setup with no custom extras.

• noun

  She always orders a scoop of vanilla rather than chocolate.

• adjective

  His report was deliberately vanilla to avoid controversy.

Where does vanilla come from?

Language of origin: Spanish

This word travelled into English from the Spanish vainilla, which is a diminutive of vaina meaning 'pod', 'case', or 'sheath'. Spanish explorers in Mexico encountered the long, slender seed pods of the climbing orchid that the Aztecs prized for flavouring, and the pods looked to them like little sheaths, hence the affectionate diminutive. The Spanish vaina itself descends from the Latin vagina, which simply meant a 'sheath' or 'scabbard' for a blade. English picked the word up in the early 1600s, first for the plant and its pods and soon for the prized flavouring extracted from them. The spelling trap lives in the middle: the sound suggests a single soft run, but the standard form keeps one 'n' and a doubled 'l', so it is vanilla, not 'vanila' or 'vannilla'.

How the word is built

• vanill- (from Spanish vainilla, 'little pod')
• -a (noun ending)