lettuce
/ˈlɛtɪs
/noun
1A cultivated plant of the daisy family, with edible leaves that are eaten in salads.
- Lactuca sativa, family Compositae.
- At home we grow sweetcorn, beans, tomatoes, carrots, lettuce, garlic and leeks.
- In the vegetable garden, carrots, spring onions, lettuce, spinach and radishes can all be planted.
1.1Used in names of other plants with edible green leaves, e.g. lamb’s lettuce, sea lettuce.It came with a sauce Gribiche (a thick egg mayo type version of the caper sauce) and a salad of tender lambs' lettuce with a subtle but still distinctively walnut oil vinaigrette....
- I particularly liked the leaves of baby jem lettuce, the oven-roasted tomatoes and the black and green olives.
- An average dinner in our house is fish or baked chicken with lambs lettuce.
Origin
Middle English: from Old French letues, laitues, plural of laitue, from Latin lactuca, from lac, lact- 'milk' (because of its milky juice).
Lettuce came into English from Old French letues or laitues, from Latin lactuca, whose root was lac ‘milk’—the connection was the milky juice that lettuce produces. Latin lac also gave us lactic (late 18th century), ‘relating to milk’.