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tofu

TOH-foo · noun

Middle ChineseJapaneseEnglish

Origin

Tofu comes from Japanese 豆腐 (tōfu), which was itself borrowed from Middle Chinese 豆腐, meaning "curdled bean."

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Journey

The word passed from Middle Chinese into Japanese with its meaning intact, and English later borrowed the Japanese form as-is.

Related words

Tofu is a doublet of dubu (the Korean word for the same food) and doufu (a Chinese-derived English form) — three different routes from the same Middle Chinese root arriving in English.

More words

From Middle Chinese

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