cassava

1. 1.

   a starch made by leaching and drying the root of the cassava plant; the source of tapioca; a staple food in the tropics

   Synonymscassava starchmaniocmanioca

   Broaderstarch
2. 2.

   cassava root eaten as a staple food after drying and leaching; source of tapioca

   Synonymsmanioc

   Broaderroot

   Part ofbitter cassava
3. 3.

   any of several plants of the genus Manihot having fleshy roots yielding a nutritious starch

   Synonymscasava

   Broadershrub

   Narrowerbitter cassavasweet cassava

   Part ofManihot

Other forms of cassava

plural

cassavas·

Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.

Questions about cassava

What does cassava mean?

cassava means "a starch made by leaching and drying the root of the cassava plant; the source of tapioca; a staple food in the tropics". That is the primary sense; the word has 3 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in cassava?

cassava has 3 syllables: cas-sa-va. The stress falls on "cas".

What is another word for cassava?

Close synonyms include cassava starch, manioc, manioca, manioc, casava. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is cassava a common word?

cassava is banded "Uncommon" — turns up in careful writing rather than conversation. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.