Food & drinkAnimals, plants & weather

bok choy

Bok choy is Cantonese baak choi, 'white vegetable', for its pale stems; English wrote it pak-tsae in 1847 and settled on bok choy (US) and pak choi (UK) in the 20th century. Other Chinese pronunciations of the same word gave Korean baechu, Japanese hakusai and Tagalog petsay.

Weakest linkCertain

The road to American English

From Cantonese to Japanese

From American English to Tagalog

From English to Russian

1800Cantonese

Hops are evenly spaced; labels show the year each form is first attested.

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