hungry rice en · NOUN
Etymology
So called by Europeans because it was mistakenly believed to be a famine food in West Africa.
Meanings
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(uncountable) The cereal Digitaria exilis or white fonio.
During the French colonial occupation of Mali and Senegal in the late 1800s, Europeans dubbed fonio “hungry rice”, believing it to be an inferior famine food. […]
[2023 July 6, Maria C. Hunt, “Could an ancient, climate-friendly crop be the future of beer?”, in The Guardian, →ISSN: