Definitions

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

  • noun A bunching onion or a young onion harvested before the bulb develops.
  • noun Any of several onionlike plants, such as a shallot.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The shallot, Allium Ascalonicum, especially a variety majus; also, the leek, and the common onion when sown thick so as not to form a large bulb.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun (Bot.) A kind of small onion (Allium Ascalonicum), native of Palestine; the eschalot, or shallot.
  • noun Any onion which does not “bottom out,” but remains with a thick stem like a leek.

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

  • noun now A spring onion, Allium fistulosum.
  • noun now Any of various similar members of the genus Allium.
  • noun Any onion that lacks a fully developed bulb.
  • noun US, Scotland A leek.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a young onion before the bulb has enlarged; eaten in salads
  • noun plant having a large slender white bulb and flat overlapping dark green leaves; used in cooking; believed derived from the wild Allium ampeloprasum

Etymologies

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

[Middle English scaloun, from Anglo-Norman scalun, from Vulgar Latin *escalōnia, alteration of Latin (caepa) Ascalōnia, Ascalonian (onion), shallot, feminine of Ascalōnius, Ascalonian, from Ascalō, Ascalōn-, Ascalon (Ashkelon), an ancient city of southwest Palestine, from Hebrew ’ašqəlôn; see ṯql in Semitic roots.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Anglo-Norman scalun (cognate with Old French escalogne), from a Proto-Romance derivation of Latin Ascalonius (in caepa ("onion") Ascalonius, "shallot"), from Ascalo ("Ascalon"), from Ancient Greek Ἀσκάλων (Askalon, "Ascalon, an ancient Palestinian port"), from Phoenician

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