shiro

S1H4I1R1O1

noun

A stew of Ethiopia and Eritrea origin whose primary ingredient is powdered chickpeas or broad-bean meal.

UncommonScrabble 8

Meanings

shiro1

nounshiro (uncountable)
  1. uncountableA stew of Ethiopia and Eritrea origin whose primary ingredient is powdered chickpeas or broad-bean meal.

shiro2

nounshiro (plural shiros)

plural shiros

  1. A mass of hyphae constituting the mycelium of certain fungi.

    ‘Shiro’ refers to the dense mat of fungal filaments that Tricholoma Matsutake forms in soil in association with pine roots and soil particles. It is considered that the amount of mycelia in T. matsutake shiros is closely related to the amount of emerged T. matsutake fruiting body.

    2007 September 24, Lu-Min Vaario, “Can we regulate the growth of shiro?”, in Matsutake Workshop, archived from the original on 09 Jun 2022
    1 more example

    Another commonly used Japanese term in matsutake literature is "shiro". As a Japanese noun, it means castle or domain (fruiting place) of a mushroom. As an adjective, it means white. More specifically, a shiro is the dense mat of fungal filaments ("hyphae" or collectively "mycelium") that matsutake species form in the soil.

    1997, David Hosford, David Pilz, Randy Molina, Michael Amaranthus, Ecology and Management of the Commercially Harvested American Matsutake Mushroom, page 2

Shiro3

proper noun
  1. A male given name from Japanese.

Origin

shiro · noun

  1. tiሺሮ“chickpea flour”
  2. Englishshiro

Possibly from Amharic or Tigrinya ሺሮ (širo, “chickpea flour”)

Full word history & related roots →

shiro · noun

Of Japanese origin, either 城 (shiro, “castle”) or 白 (shiro, “white”) (see quotation below).

Full word history & related roots →

Shiro · proper noun

  1. Japaneseしろう
  2. EnglishShiro

Borrowed from Japanese しろう (Shirō).

Full word history & related roots →

Rhymes & wordplay

Anagrams

Cite this entry
APA

shiro. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 2, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/shiro

MLA

“shiro.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/shiro. Accessed November 2, 2026.

Chicago

WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “shiro,” accessed November 2, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/shiro.

Source: shiro on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.