An informal short form for cucumber, the green vegetable commonly used in salads and pickling.
From 'cucumber' shortened in casual American English speech, similar to how 'veggie' comes from 'vegetable.' It entered common speech in the 1800s and became popular in American dialect.
English speakers love shortening words into snappy slang—'cuke,' 'veggie,' 'mozzarella' becoming 'mozz'! This shows how informal speech actually shapes language more than formal rules, and dictionaries just eventually catch up.
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