Meaning

noun a starch made by leaching and drying the root of the cassava plant; the source of tapioca; a staple food in the tropics

noun cassava root eaten as a staple food after drying and leaching; source of tapioca

noun any of several plants of the genus Manihot having fleshy roots yielding a nutritious starch

originBorrowed from Spanish cazabe, from Taíno *kasabi (“cassava flour”) (whence Garifuna sibiba), from Proto-Arawak *sapi.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 3.0