kangkong

English

Etymology

From Tagalog kangkong and Indonesian kangkung.

Noun

kangkong (uncountable)

1. Water spinach (Ipomoea aquatica), grown for food in parts of Southeast Asia.
   • 2004, GJH Grubben, Vegetables, page 334:

     Germination rates of local kangkong cultivars are often low (<60%) because of hard-seededness induced by long storage.

   • 2015, Eka Kurniawan, translated by Labodalih Sembiring, Man Tiger, Verso, page 1:

     Not long after the plantation was declared bankrupt, people had arrived to put up boundary stakes, clear away the water hyacinths and vast tangles of kangkong, and plant the marsh with rice.

Tagalog

Alternative forms

• cangcong — obsolete, Spanish-based orthography

Etymology

Unknown. Possibly from:

• Proto-Philippine *taŋkuŋ (“an edible plant, swamp cabbage: Ipomoea aquatica”). Compare Cebuano tangkong, Agutaynen tangkong, Tboli tangkung~tlangkung.
• Hokkien 孔 (kháng, “hole”) +‎ 空 (khong, “empty, hollow”). Compare Chinese 空心菜 (kōngxīncài).

Cognate to Indonesian kangkung and Malay kangkung.

Pronunciation

• (Standard Tagalog) IPA^(key): /kaŋˈkoŋ/ [kɐŋˈkoŋ]
• Rhymes: -oŋ
• Syllabification: kang‧kong

Noun

kangkóng (Baybayin spelling ᜃᜅ᜔ᜃᜓᜅ᜔)

1. water spinach (Ipomoea aquatica)

Derived terms

• bulak-kangkong
• kangkong-dapo
• kangkong-kalabaw
• kangkungan

 

See also

• polonchay

 

References

• “kangkong”, in Pambansang Diksiyonaryo | Diksiyonaryo.ph, Manila, 2018
• Blust, Robert; Trussel, Stephen; et al. (2023) “*taŋkuŋ”, in the CLDF dataset from The Austronesian Comparative Dictionary (2010–), →DOI