Meaning & use
dasheen
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Meaning
nouncountable or uncountableregional
A tropical plant with large leaves and a starchy underground stem, grown as a food crop; taro of the larger-rooted type.
Grammar: Countable for the plant or one root, uncountable as a food: boiled dasheen.
Patterns
- dasheen leaves
- boiled dasheen
Grandma boiled the dasheen until it was soft and served it with fish.
The market stall sold dasheen, yams and green bananas.
Dasheen leaves are used in a thick soup in the islands.
Word forms
| plural | dasheens |
|---|
Common combinations
- boiled dasheen
- The meal came with boiled dasheen and salt fish.
- dasheen leaves
- She cooked dasheen leaves with coconut milk.
- dasheen bush
- In Trinidad, a stew made with dasheen bush is called callaloo.
- peel the dasheen
- Wear gloves when you peel the dasheen, because it can irritate the skin.
- mashed dasheen
- He served mashed dasheen with butter.
Synonyms and how they differ
- taro
- Taro is the general international name for the plant, while dasheen is mainly a Caribbean and Southern US word for one common kind.
- eddoe
- Eddoe is a smaller, related taro with small corms, while dasheen is the larger root.
- cocoyam
- Cocoyam is the name used for taro in parts of West Africa, so it is regional in the same way dasheen is.
- elephant ear
- Elephant ear describes the large leaves of the plant and is also used for ornamental varieties, not just food.
Word family
- taro noun
- the general name for this root vegetable and its plant
- callaloo noun
- a Caribbean dish made from leafy greens such as dasheen leaves
- corm noun
- the swollen underground stem of a plant such as dasheen
Commonly confused: dasheen or yam? dasheen or cassava?
dasheen vs yam
Yam is a different root vegetable from a separate plant family, although the two are often sold side by side.
dasheen vs cassava
Cassava is another starchy root, but it comes from a shrub and must be processed carefully, unlike dasheen.
Practice
In a Caribbean market, the large starchy root with heart-shaped leaves called ___ is a type of taro.
Choose one answer.
Dasheen is a variety of taro. Cassava is a different root, beetroot is a temperate vegetable, and plantain is a cooking banana that grows above ground.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “dasheen”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.