edible

Pluraledibles

1. 1
   safe to eatadjective

   Safe to eat; fit to be consumed by people without causing them any harm.

   The candies come wrapped in thin rice paper, which is edible and dissolves on the tongue.

   Unlike its poisonous cousin, the shrub bears edible berries that ripen in late summer.

   Similareatable

   Oppositeinedible

   Note

   The yes-or-no sense, which sorts things into safe and unsafe: a berry is edible or it is not, and the word takes no degrees here. Behind it is Late Latin edibilis, from Latin edō, “eat”, so at bottom it means “able to be eaten”. Edible fruit or an edible wrapper makes a claim about safety, not flavor; whether something tastes acceptable is the business of the “palatable” meaning.

2. 2
   cannabis treatnouncountable

   A food, usually a baked good, infused with tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) from cannabis butter or another marijuana product.

   The dispensary stocks edibles ranging from chocolate bars to sour gummies.

   She preferred a cannabis edible to smoking, since it left no smell in her apartment.

3. 3
   good enoughadjective

   Acceptable enough in taste or condition to be eaten without disgust or distaste.

   The cafeteria lasagna was barely edible, but we were too hungry to complain.

   A squeeze of lemon and plenty of salt turned the watery soup into something edible.

   Similareatable, palatable

   Oppositeinedible, unpalatable

   Note

   Here edibility comes in degrees, and the word bends to match. Ernest Small's Culinary Herbs (2006) describes the stores in germinated seeds turning into “more edible and palatable substances”, and the eater need not be human: Jane Van Zandt Brower in 1957 judged the Viceroy butterfly “more edible than its model, the Monarch”. In everyday talk the word concedes rather than praises: although stale, the bread was edible.

4. 4
   food itemnouncountable

   Anything that is fit to be eaten; an item of food.

   During the famine, villagers boiled acorns, nettles, bark, and any other edible that might fill a stomach.

   Volunteers sorted the donations, setting the edibles apart from the clothing and blankets.

   Similarfoodstuff, food

5. 5
   gardenadjective

   Of a garden or other planted space: used for growing plants that people harvest and eat.

   The restaurant's edible garden supplies most of the greens and herbs on its menu.

   The city is planning an edible park, where residents can pick apples and plums from public trees.

   Note

   A transferred use, in which the adjective moves from the crop to the place that grows it: an edible garden or an edible window box is one you harvest from, not one you eat. The contrast it draws is with flowers and ornamental planting, as in Valentina Peveri's The Edible Gardens of Ethiopia (2020), though Peveri adds that such gardens are valued just as much for their beauty.

6. 6
   mushroomnouncountable

   A mushroom that can be eaten safely, as opposed to a poisonous or inedible one.

   The mycology club's fall foray turned up a dozen edibles and twice as many poisonous species.

   Chanterelles are a choice edible, but beginners sometimes confuse them with the poisonous jack-o'-lantern mushroom.

   Note

   Context does the narrowing here: nothing in the noun itself says “mushroom”, so an edible becomes a fungus only when mushrooms are already the subject. Without that setting the word falls back to the general noun for food. Like the adjective's safety sense, it divides the safe from the dangerous rather than the tasty from the bland, and esculent is its synonym.

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