A small green herb with tiny leaves, used to give flavour to food. It is one of the standard Western cooking herbs, especially in French, Italian, and English kitchens — you put it in soup, roast chicken, stews, tomato sauce, and roast potatoes. It has a warm, slightly sharp, slightly earthy smell. You can buy it fresh (small woody stems with leaves on them) or dried (little grey-green flakes in a jar). Cooks usually drop a whole sprig in the pot and pull the stem out later, because the stem is too woody to eat. The plant is low and bushy, grows well in dry stony ground, and is common as a garden plant in Europe. The most important thing about this word is not the plant but the sound: "thyme" is pronounced exactly like "time" — the "th" and the "e" are both silent. It is an uncountable noun, so you say "some thyme" or "a sprig of thyme," not "a thyme" or "two thymes." You will see it on packet labels and in recipes far more often than you will hear it spoken.