potato
Americannoun
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potatoes
plural
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Also called white potato, Irish potato. the edible tuber of a cultivated plant, Solanum tuberosum, of the nightshade family.
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the plant itself.
noun
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Also called: Irish potato, white potato.
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a solanaceous plant, Solanum tuberosum, of South America: widely cultivated for its edible tubers
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the starchy oval tuber of this plant, which has a brown or red skin and is cooked and eaten as a vegetable
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any of various similar plants, esp the sweet potato
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slang a delicate or awkward matter
Usage
Plural word for potato The plural form of potato is potatoes. The plurals of several other singular words that end in -o are also formed this way, including tomato/tomatoes and echo/echoes. In some cases, the plurals of words that end in -o that are adopted from another language can be formed by adding either -es or -s, as in mosquito/mosquitoes/mosquitos or mango/mangoes/mangos. However, this is not the case with potato/potatoes. Potatos is an invalid spelling of the plural of potato.
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of potato
First recorded in 1545–55; from Spanish patata “potato,” variant of batata “sweet potato,” from Taíno
Explanation
The potato is a mighty tuber! You can find it baked, mashed, or fried, among other things, in kitchens the world over. Potato, which comes from the Spanish word patata, originally meant "sweet potato." Potatoes have been around for quite awhile. If you'd lived in the Andes 1800 years ago, you might have been eating potatoes ever since (though you might be sick of them by now). Remember that the plural form of this starchy vegetable ends in "toes."
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
For appetizers, I also love putting out potato chips, olives, slices of salami and cucumbers.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 18, 2026
Think of the logic of salt-and-vinegar potato chips: starch loves that sharp little counterpoint.
From Salon ● Oct. 5, 2026
The useful motive is the one everyone thinks of first: I need that potato peeler.
From MarketWatch ● Sep. 29, 2026
She also hankers after her mother's "unmatched" egg and potato sandwiches.
From BBC ● Sep. 19, 2026
The potato stalks leaned against each other, limp and wet, the leaves shapeless and dripping.
From "Nory Ryan’s Song" by Patricia Reilly Giff
"We think our potatoes will be 20 to 25% down," he says.
From BBC ● Oct. 8, 2026
Those savings are not small potatoes: The skin substitutes cost taxpayers billions, and the figure has risen dramatically since before the pandemic.
From MarketWatch ● Oct. 5, 2026
White wine vinegar — or even plain distilled white vinegar — is excellent with potatoes, creamy chicken soups and corn chowders.
From Salon ● Oct. 5, 2026
Smith was heading to a Louisiana Walmart distribution center to unload 37,000 pounds of potatoes.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 4, 2026
We landed in a pile of potatoes—mashed potatoes now—in the castle kitchen.
From "Rump: The (Fairly) True Story of Rumpelstilskin" by Liesl Shurtliff
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Get a wordDefinitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
