🇺🇸
male🇺🇸
female🇬🇧
male🇬🇧
femalePlural
anises
Anis (more commonly spelled 'anise' in English) is a flowering plant whose seeds have a strong, sweet, licorice-like flavor and aroma — widely used in cooking, baking, and spirits like ouzo and pastis. Think of it as nature’s candy-flavored spice that makes cookies fragrant and cocktails mysteriously cloudy when water is added.
The baker added crushed anis seeds to the dough for a subtle licorice note.
Traditional Greek ouzo gets its distinctive taste from anis and other botanicals.
She mistook caraway for anis because both seeds look similar but have different flavors.
Anis is often used in Middle Eastern desserts like ma'amoul and in Mexican atole.
The herbal tea blend included anis, fennel, and chamomile to soothe digestion.
anis
Comes from the Greek 'anison', likely derived from a Semitic source (e.g., Akkadian 'anīsu' or related West Semitic terms), denoting the aromatic herb Pimpinella anisum. It carries the core meaning of 'sweet, licorice-scented seed/plant'. Examples include anise (English), anís (Spanish), Anis (German), anison (Latin).