truffle
Definitions
General English
- noun a type of round black edible fungus found under the earth near trees
- noun a soft sweet made of chocolate, often flavoured with rum
Food
- A fungus whose fruiting body grows underground as an irregular roundish mass without a distinct stalk. They are always associated with the roots of trees and may have a symbiotic relationship with the tree. The two most highly prized are the French black and the Italian white.
- A round soft chocolate-based sweet or confection usually rolled in grated chocolate, cocoa powder or chopped nuts or dipped in chocolate couverture and served with a selection of small cakes or as an after dinner sweet with coffee
Travel
- noun a rich ball-shaped chocolate with a centre of soft chocolate
Origin & History of “truffle”
English acquired truffle, probably via Dutch truffel, from early modern French truffle, a derivative of Old French truffe (which survives as the modern French term for the fungus). this in turn came via Provençal trufa from a vulgar Latin *tūfera, an alteration of the plural of Latin tūber ‘swelling, lump, tuber, truffle’ (from which English gets tuber (17th c.) and tuberculosis (19th c.)). The term was first used for a chocolate sweet with the external appearance of a truffle in the 1920s.
