A natural gum obtained from the sapwood of the sapodilla tree, used as the main ingredient in chewing gum.
From Spanish 'chicle,' which came from Nahuatl 'tzictli,' the Aztec word for the sap of the sapodilla tree. European colonizers adopted this word directly from indigenous Mesoamerican peoples.
Chicle was the original 'natural' chewing gum that the Maya and Aztecs chewed, and when Americans started manufacturing commercial gum in the 1870s, they switched to synthetic versions because chicle trees were getting scarce—but some premium gums still use the real thing.
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