noun

• 1A round yellowish edible seed, widely used as a pulse.

  Also called garbanzo

  ‘Cut back and focus on getting more of your protein from vegetables like chickpeas and lima beans.’

  More example sentences

  • ‘The soup is packed with healthy ingredients like garlic, carrots, chickpeas, and corn.’
  • ‘Almonds, walnuts, kidney beans, lentils, chickpeas and sunflower seeds are healthy options.’
  • ‘For instance, instead of high fat chicken nuggets, try lean pieces of chicken or pulses such as beans or chickpeas.’
  • ‘It's cold and tangy, a delicious vegetarian stew of eggplant, chickpeas, and onion in a chunky tomato sauce.’

• 2The Old World plant of the pea family which bears chickpeas.

  Cicer arietinum, family Leguminosae

  ‘The pods in the spaced chickpea plants were fully exposed to light for most of the day.’

  More example sentences

  • ‘A different mineral nutrient solution was applied to each of four groups of chickpea plants from the time of transplanting to the sand mixture (7 d after imbibition).’
  • ‘The chickpea is a delicate, graceful plant that branches near the ground and is usually about 2 feet high.’
  • ‘Seeds of chickpea and maize were surface-sterilized for 30 minutes, pre-germinated in the dark in a Petri dish with adequate water, and were then planted in quartz sand.’
  • ‘Pulse crops, particularly lentil, chickpea and dry bean varieties similarly show the impact of public breeding work.’