Meaning & use
boniato
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Meaning
nouncountable or uncountable
A kind of sweet potato with pale cream flesh and a dry, mildly sweet taste, widely eaten in the Caribbean and Latin America.
Grammar: Countable for single roots (two boniatos), uncountable for the food: roasted boniato.
Patterns
- boniato with something
We roasted boniato with garlic and olive oil.
The market sold boniatos next to yams and plantains.
Boniato holds its shape better than orange sweet potato when fried.
Word forms
| plural | boniatos |
|---|
Common combinations
- roasted boniato
- Roasted boniato makes a good side dish.
- mashed boniato
- She served mashed boniato with pork.
- fried boniato
- Fried boniato chips were crisp and lightly sweet.
- peel the boniato
- Peel the boniato before cutting it into cubes.
Synonyms and how they differ
- sweet potato
- Sweet potato is the general term, while boniato names a specific paler, drier variety.
- batata
- Batata is the Spanish and Portuguese word and is used in English mainly in Latin American food contexts.
- yam
- Yam usually means a different, starchier root, though some shops mislabel sweet potatoes as yams.
Word family
- sweet potato noun
- the wider group of root vegetable
- tuber noun
- a thick underground plant part used as food
Commonly confused: boniato or yam?
boniato vs yam
A true yam is a starchy tuber from a different plant family, whereas boniato is a sweet potato.
Practice
Which food is a boniato?
Choose one answer.
Boniato is a Caribbean sweet potato with pale flesh. The other options are not root vegetables.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “boniato”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.