Napa cabbage when used as food. The Japanese name for this specific variety of cabbage is hakusai (), a Sino-Japanese reading of the Chinese name "báicài" (), literally "white vegetable". The Korean name for napa cabbage, baechu (), is a nativized word from the Sino-Korean reading, "baekchae", of the same Chinese character sets. Today in Mandarin Chinese, napa cabbage is known as dàbáicài (), literally "big white vegetable", as opposed to the "small white vegetable" that is known in English as bok choy. Outside of Asia, this vegetable is also referred to as Chinese cabbage. Regionally, it is also known as sui
Vegetable meaning then being "the edible part of such a plant". A more precise definition is "any plant part consumed for food that is not a fruit or seed, but including mature fruits that are eaten as part of a main meal". Falling outside these definitions are edible fungi (such as edible mushrooms) and edible seaweed which, although not parts of plants, are often treated as vegetables. In the latter-mentioned definition of "vegetable", which is used in everyday language, the words "fruit" and "vegetable" are mutually exclusive. "Fruit" has a precise botanical meaning, being a part that developed from the ovary