Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A drink made of ground chufa, rice, or almonds combined with water, sweetened with sugar, and often flavored with cinnamon, usually served cold.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun a sweet beverage variously made with rice, chufa or morro seeds, water, sugar, and cinnamon, and sometimes with milk

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Spanish, ultimately from Latin hordeum, barley (probably via Mozarabic *orǧata; akin to Old Italian orzata and Medieval Latin hordeātum, sweet drink made from barley).]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Catalan (Valencian dialect) orxata, from ordiata, ordi ("barley") + -ata ("-ate, of, made from"), from Latin *hordeata, from hordeum ("barely").

Support

Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word horchata.

Examples

Comments

Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.

  • "'...we were walking to the village to drink horchata when we met Dr von Liebig. I asked him to join us.'"

    --P. O'Brian, The Yellow Admiral, 41

    March 19, 2008