Couscous is a North African food made from tiny pieces of crushed wheat. When it is cooked, usually with steam, it goes soft and light, and people eat it with vegetables, meat, or a stew poured over it. In English the word names both those little grains and the dish itself. It is not a rare restaurant-only word, though you will see it on menus. Say it roughly KOOS-koos. English borrowed it from French couscous, from Arabic kuskus, and that from a Berber language; it has been in English since about 1593.