A South American shrub or plant; a climbing plant producing edible tubers or fruits.
From Spanish or Portuguese bachichi, from a Native South American language. The etymology is uncertain but likely comes from an indigenous Andean or Amazonian language where the plant was native.
Bachichi is a great example of how European colonizers learned names for new plants by adopting indigenous words wholesale—we don't actually know its original language because colonial documentation was so poor, but the plant's names traveled with it around the world.
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