Definitions

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

  • noun The soybean.
  • noun Soy sauce.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A kind or sauce prepared in the East from the soy-bean (see def. 2).
  • noun The soy-bean or-pea, Glycine Soja (Soja hispida, etc.).

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

  • noun A Chinese and Japanese liquid sauce for fish, etc., made by subjecting boiled beans (esp. soybeans), or beans and meal, to long fermentation and then long digestion in salt and water.
  • noun (Bot.) The soybean.

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

  • noun A Chinese and Japanese liquid sauce for fish, made by subjecting boiled beans to long fermentation and then long digestion in salt and water. US preference is the term soy sauce.
  • noun Soybeans. Often used attributively.

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

  • noun a source of oil; used for forage and soil improvement and as food
  • noun erect bushy hairy annual herb having trifoliate leaves and purple to pink flowers; extensively cultivated for food and forage and soil improvement but especially for its nutritious oil-rich seeds; native to Asia
  • noun thin sauce made of fermented soy beans
  • noun the most highly proteinaceous vegetable known; the fruit of the soybean plant is used in a variety of foods and as fodder (especially as a replacement for animal protein)

Etymologies

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

[Dutch soja, from Japanese shōyu, soy sauce, from Middle Chinese tsiaŋ` jiw (also the source of Mandarin jiàngyóu) : Middle Chinese tsiaŋ`, soy paste + Middle Chinese jiw, oil, sauce.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Probably via Dutch soja, from a Japanese variant of 醤油 (しょうゆ, shōyu), from Chinese 醬油 (jiàngyóu), from ‘bean paste’ + ‘oil’.

Support

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

Examples

Comments

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

  • See: equol

    November 18, 2008

  • Loving Century def #2. Definitely time to see the term soy-pea come back into vogue.

    April 6, 2011

  • ¡Yo soy P.!

    April 6, 2011

  • stout... erect... stem... hairs... sauce... oil expressed... residue... fertilze(r)...

    Century dick-tionary.

    April 6, 2011

  • You love it yarb. Go on, soy it!

    April 6, 2011

  • That Webster's definition reminds me of Boba Fett and the sarlacc pit.

    April 6, 2011

  • My favourite scene from all the Star Wars movies.

    April 6, 2011

  • If I ever start a band, I might have to call it Boba Fett and the Sarlacc Pit.

    April 6, 2011