A zucchini is that long vegetable with smooth dark-green skin, pale soft flesh and a mild taste — the one that looks like a small fat cucumber but is cooked, not eaten raw. You slice it and fry it, put it in soup, grill it, or grate it into cakes and bread. Botanically it is a young marrow, picked small while the skin is still tender.

The interesting part is which English you are speaking. Americans, Canadians and Australians say zucchini; the British, the Irish and New Zealanders say courgette. Same vegetable, two borrowings — one from Italian, one from French. Neither is more correct; just know both, because a British recipe will say courgette and an American one zucchini, and a student who knows only one word will stall halfway through the recipe.

The plural is normally zucchini, unchanged — 'three zucchini' — since the word was already plural in Italian, though you will hear 'zucchinis' from plenty of native speakers and nobody minds. It also works uncountably when you mean the food in general: 'I don't like zucchini.' There is also 'zucchini flower', the yellow blossom, which restaurants stuff and fry.