cole

cole — noun

1. An old term for leafy plants of the cabbage family, grown for their thick, curly

1.noun
Definition

An old term for leafy plants of the cabbage family, grown for their thick, curly leaves which are eaten as a vegetable.

Example

Old Mrs. Whitfield boiled a handful of cole leaves with the Sunday ham.

The seed catalogue listed six kinds of cole under 'Heirloom Vegetables.'

domain: agriculture and heirloom vegetable varieties

Common collocations
  • cole crops
  • coleslaw
  • colewort
Synonyms
  • brassica

    the modern scientific term; used in botany rather than everyday speech

  • cabbage

    refers to the tight-headed variety sold in shops; cole is a broader, older term

  • kale

    one specific type of cole with loose, curly leaves; widely eaten as a health food today

Usage Note

Mainly found today inside the words coleslaw and cole crops. Using cole on its own to mean cabbage sounds old-fashioned in modern English.

Common Mistakes

I made a cole salad for lunch.
I made coleslaw for lunch.
'cole' by itself is not used in modern cooking; say 'coleslaw' or name the specific vegetable.

Word family

Synonym discussion

Sense: noun/1

Cole, brassica, cabbage, and kale all point to plants in the mustard family, but they operate at different levels of precision. Cole is an old word for any leafy brassica grown for food — it is the broadest and most old-fashioned of the four. Brassica is the modern scientific genus name and sounds technical; you would use it in a botany paper, not at the dinner table. Cabbage refers specifically to the tight-headed variety, the round pale-green vegetable found in every supermarket. Kale is a particular brassica with loose, curly leaves that has become popular as a health food. So if a sixteenth-century farmer said 'cole,' he might have meant kale, cabbage, or any leafy green in between — but today a shopper who wants kale will not ask for cole.

brassica ↗cabbage ↗kale ↗

Etymology

LatinOld EnglishMiddle EnglishEnglish

Cole comes from Old English cāl or cāwel, which was borrowed from Latin caulis meaning 'stem' or 'cabbage.' It is the same root that gave us kale (a northern English form), cauliflower, and kohlrabi. For centuries cole was the ordinary English word for cabbage; it only fell out of everyday use in the 1700s, surviving in compounds like coleslaw (from Dutch koolsla, 'cabbage salad') and colewort.

First known use

12th century

12th century, in the meaning defined above