potato
Americannoun
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potatoes
plural
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Also called white potato. Also called 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:
Xu, whose mother died when he was a year old, recalled in a speech how he ate only sweet potato and steamed bread in his school years.
From Barron's ● Aug. 20, 2026
As the peaches soften, periodically crush them against the side of the saucepan with the back of a wooden spoon or a potato masher to help release their juices.
From Salon ● Aug. 16, 2026
That difference supported the idea that potato cultivation played an important role, but the researchers had to rule out another major event in Indigenous American history.
From Science Daily ● Aug. 10, 2026
Lengthy negotiations secured the bird's release, but not before refugees carried Feliks in a potato sack over the Nahr al-Kabir river on the northern border between Syria and Lebanon, the Associated Press reported.
From BBC ● Aug. 7, 2026
Bake this comforting casserole in the preheated oven for about 20 minutes, or until the potato chips are lightly browned.
From Each Little Bird That Sings by Deborah Wiles
"Trying to find people that will accept potatoes like that is very difficult. So that ultimately means a lot of wastage for us," Munns added.
From BBC ● Aug. 11, 2026
The ancestors of Indigenous Andeans already possessed different numbers of AMY1 copies before settling in the highlands and domesticating potatoes.
From Science Daily ● Aug. 10, 2026
The images were of a spit of land where their parents and grandparents once raised potatoes.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 9, 2026
Even the qualities of potatoes coming from the same supplier in the same location can vary significantly depending on the time of year.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 5, 2026
I took the potatoes to the kitchen and rushed upstairs.
From "Code Name Kingfisher" by Liz Kessler
Definitions 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.
