Forms: 8–9 tipioca, 9 (tapiaca), tapioca. [a. Pg., Sp., F. tapioca, a. Tupi-Guarani tipioca; f. tipi residue, dregs + og, ók to squeeze out. (Cavalcante in Skeat.)] A starch used for food, the prepared flour of the roots of the CASSAVA plant. Also attrib.
[1612. Capt. Smith, Map Virginia, 13. The chiefe roote they haue for foode is called Tockawhoughe.… Raw it is no better then poison, and being roasted except it be tender … it will prickle and torment the throat extreamly.
1648. Marcgrave, Hist. Nat. Brasil., 67. Fecula albissima, quam indigenæ vocant Tipioja, Tipiaca & Tipiabica.]
1707. Sloane, Voy. Jamaica, I. 131. The juice evaporated over the fire gives the Tipioca meal.
1753. Chambers, Cycl. Supp., Tipioca, a name given … to a sort of cream or flower made from the yucca or manibot-root … after expressing the juice.
1792. Encycl. Brit. (ed. 3), IX. 79/2. Starch, which the Brasilians export in little lumps under the name of tapioca.
1812. J. Smyth, Pract. of Customs (1821), 253. Tapioca is the farina, obtained by subsidence in a very fine state, after washing the pulp of the root of the Cassava, which grows in South America.
1869. R. F. Burton, Highl. Brazil, II. 39. The sediment of the juice that comes from the mass is called tipioca (our tapioca) and the liquor is thrown away.
1897. Kipling, Life’s Handicap, vi. 169. Smoked tapioca pudding:
b. In generalized application.
1856. Farmer’s Mag., Nov., 409. Properly granulated and dried, potato meal forms an excellent tapioca.
