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Cabbage, Not the Vegetable
Does the "filching" meaning of cabbage bring to mind an image of thieves sneaking out of farm fields with armloads of pilfered produce? If so, you're in for a surprise. This use has nothing to do with the leafy vegetable. It originally referred to the practice among tailors of pocketing part of the cloth given to them to make garments. The verb was cut from the same cloth as an older British noun cabbage, which meant "pieces of cloth left in cutting out garments and traditionally kept by tailors as perquisites." Both of those ethically questionable cabbages probably derived from cabas, the Middle French word for "cheating or theft." The cabbage found in coleslaw, on the other hand, comes from Middle English caboche, which meant "head."
Synonyms
Noun (1)
Examples of cabbage in a Sentence
Salvador Hernandez, Los Angeles Times, 7 Aug. 2024
How is the pesticide used? DCPA is used to control weeds on crops like broccoli, brussels sprouts, cabbage, and onions.
—Chantelle Lee, TIME, 7 Aug. 2024
Depending on the season, tables will be piled with bundles of radishes, heads of cabbage, or baskets of peppers—all organic and grown within a 25-county region.
—Jennifer Justus, Southern Living, 2 July 2024
Vegetables: Now is the time to germinate seeds of cole crops: cabbage, Chinese Cabbage, Bok Choy, collard greens, turnips, kohlrabi, Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, kale, mustard greens, and radishes.
—Joshua Siskin, Orange County Register, 1 Aug. 2024
See all Example Sentences for cabbage 
These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'cabbage.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.
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“Cabbage.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/cabbage. Accessed 22 Aug. 2024.
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