ONION
What does "ONION" mean?
A round edible bulb with a pungent taste and concentric layers, used widely in cooking.
Meanings
- The layered, strong-smelling bulb of a plant in the allium family, eaten raw or cooked as a vegetable and flavouring. He chopped an onion and his eyes began to water within seconds.
- Something understood as having many layers, especially when peeling them back reveals more, as in 'layers of an onion'. The mystery was an onion: every answer revealed another question beneath it. figurative
Did you know?
- Onions make you cry by chemistry, not malice: slicing one releases a sulfur gas that drifts up and reacts with the water in your eyes to form a weak acid, which your tears rush to wash away.
- The Latin word behind 'onion', 'unio', also meant a single large pearl - so the humble cooking bulb shares a root with the idea of a precious, unified whole.
Word origin
From Latin 'unio', a word for a single large pearl and also a single-bulb onion, via Old French 'oignon'; the sense of 'oneness' captured the bulb's many layers fused into one.
Remember it
ONION begins with 'ONE' (almost) - fitting, since its name comes from Latin 'unio', meaning one unified bulb.
A little poem
Layer under layer,
I peel toward the center-
find more crying there.
haiku
Wordplay
- I tried to make a salad without crying. Turns out I just couldn't cut it.
What it teaches
Some things only reveal themselves layer by layer, and the closer you cut to the center, the more they make you weep.
Quick facts
What does ONION mean?
A round edible bulb with a pungent taste and concentric layers, used widely in cooking.
Is ONION a valid word?
Yes — ONION is one of the answer words in Wordul, the daily word game.
How many letters is ONION?
ONION has 5 letters and 2 syllables.
Where does ONION come from?
From Latin 'unio', a word for a single large pearl and also a single-bulb onion, via Old French 'oignon'; the sense of 'oneness' captured the bulb's many layers fused into one.
What can ONION teach us?
Some things only reveal themselves layer by layer, and the closer you cut to the center, the more they make you weep.
How players do
Be the first to solve it.