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Cabbage, Not the Vegetable
Does the "filching" meaning of cabbage bring to mind an image of thieves sneaking out of farm fields with armloads of pilfered produce? If so, you're in for a surprise. This use has nothing to do with the leafy vegetable. It originally referred to the practice among tailors of pocketing part of the cloth given to them to make garments. The verb was cut from the same cloth as an older British noun cabbage, which meant "pieces of cloth left in cutting out garments and traditionally kept by tailors as perquisites." Both of those ethically questionable cabbages probably derived from cabas, the Middle French word for "cheating or theft." The cabbage found in coleslaw, on the other hand, comes from Middle English caboche, which meant "head."
Examples of cabbage in a Sentence
Lindsey Desoto, Health, 20 Dec. 2025
Winter already feels warmer with visions of charred cabbage and lemony pork-shoulder ragù stuck to glossy tubes of paccheri and showered in a mix of grated parm and pecorino.
—Hannah Goldfield, New Yorker, 20 Dec. 2025
Oaxaca’s version is topped with black beans, cabbage, avocado and three kinds of meat.
—Sean Timberlake, Sacbee.com, 20 Dec. 2025
Even better, marigolds repel cabbage maggots and nematodes2 and their flowers entice predatory insects to garden beds to keep pests in line.
—Lauren Landers, Better Homes & Gardens, 18 Dec. 2025
See All Example Sentences for cabbage
Cite this Entry
“Cabbage.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/cabbage. Accessed 21 Dec. 2025.
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