pea

pea — noun

1. one of the little green seeds found in a long pod, usually cooked and served wit

1.nounB1
Definition

one of the little green seeds found in a long pod, usually cooked and served with other food

Example

Mina shelled peas into a blue bowl beside the sink.

collocation: shell peas

The cook stirred peas into the rice before lunch.

usually plural for the food

Common collocations
  • green peas
  • frozen peas
  • pea soup
  • pea pod
  • shell peas
Synonyms
  • bean

    a broader word for many seeds that grow in pods, not only peas

  • lentil

    a much smaller, flatter seed, usually brown, green, or red

  • chickpea

    a larger, rounder pale seed with a firmer texture

Grammar Patterns

a pea

a bowl of peas

peas with rice

Usage Note

Usually plural when talking about the vegetable as food, as in frozen peas or peas with fish. Use the singular only for one seed, as in A pea fell on the floor.

Common Mistakes

Please buy a bag of pea.
Please buy a bag of peas.
When talking about the vegetable as food, English usually uses the plural form.

Synonym discussion

Sense: noun/1

For this sense, pea is the everyday word for the small round green seed cooked as a vegetable. Bean is broader: it can mean many larger seeds from different plants, so not every bean is a pea. Lentil usually refers to a flat, lens-shaped seed that is dried and cooked in soups or curries, not the bright green round seed you see in a pod. Chickpea is larger, firmer, and beige, and it is common in foods such as hummus. If you say peas with rice, people imagine small green seeds. If you say beans with rice, the picture is wider and may mean many different kinds.

pea ↗bean ↗lentil ↗chickpea ↗

Common collocations

Nouns

  • pea soup
  • pea pod
  • pea plant
  • garden peas
  • frozen peas

Phrases

  • a bowl of peas
  • shell peas
  • grow peas

Etymology

LatinOld EnglishMiddle EnglishEnglish

Pea goes back to Latin pisum. In Old and Middle English, the usual form was pise or pease. Later, speakers understood the final -s in pease as if it were a plural ending and created pea as the singular form. That is why modern English normally uses pea for one and peas for more than one.