Word.ws English Dictionary

kooyah

kooyah noun: valeriana edulis, or the large, internally bright yellow, edible root of this plant, which tastes and smells like tobacco until cooked, when it becomes sweet.

Noun

kooyah (uncountable)

  1. (US, Great Basin and Northwestern dialects) Valeriana edulis, or the large, internally bright yellow, edible root of this plant, which tastes and smells like tobacco until cooked, when it becomes sweet.
    Synonyms:
    tobaccoroot, edible valerian

Synonyms of kooyah

  • tobaccoroot
  • edible valerian

Origin of kooyah

Borrowed from Shoshone kuya (“tobacco root, Valeriana edulis”).

Questions about kooyah

What does kooyah mean?
Kooyah means valeriana edulis, or the large, internally bright yellow, edible root of this plant, which tastes and smells like tobacco until cooked, when it becomes sweet.
What part of speech is kooyah?
Kooyah is a noun.

Words near kooyah in the dictionary

  1. Koots
  2. Kootswatewa
  3. koottam
  4. koottams
  5. Koovam
  6. kooyah
  7. Kooyahoema
  8. Kooyman
  9. Kooymans
  10. Kooyong
  11. kooza

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: kooyah (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “kooyah.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/kooyah. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.