Word of the Day

: July 6, 2012

goober

noun GOO-ber

What It Means

: peanut

goober in Context

The children had a tin bucket full of goobers, which they were shelling and eating.

"18 miles south of Clovis on US 70, [Portales] is famous for its peanut industry, which supplies roasted goobers to many baseball parks across the nation." - From Sharon Niederman's 2012 book Signs and Shrines: Spiritual Journeys Across New Mexico

Did You Know?

We're just nuts about the word "goober." It's a regional term, used mainly in the southern and east-central part of the United States. But the peanut plant didn't originate in the U.S.; it's actually native to South America. It was taken from there to Africa, where the local people gave new names to the high-protein legumes. Peanuts traveled back to North America with slave traders, and there English speakers adopted a term from the Bantu languages of central and southern Africa to form "goober." "Goober" isn't the only name for "peanut" that has stuck with us. The snack staple is also known as the "groundnut," "earthnut," and, more rarely, the "pinder," another term that originated in the Bantu languages.