When a word tries to do too much, it may end up doing nothing at all. That may have been the fate of the now defunct fasels, a word used in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries to refer to both the chickpea and the kidney bean. The trouble with this double-duty was that it made for ambiguity: a cook would be stymied by a recipe calling for two cups of fasels—should she use kidney beans or chickpeas, or both? Perhaps because of this ambiguity, the word fasels became obsolete at the end of the seventeenth century, its double function being taken over and split between kidney bean and chickpea (or garbanzo, commonly used in the United States). Dissatisfaction with the word fasels was actually voiced early in its history: in 1562 the British herbalist William Turner, seeking an English equivalent for the legume’s Greek name, wrote “Phasiolus may be called in English fasels until we can find a better name for it.” Incidentally, this Greek name—phasiolus, or, more properly phaselos—is the source not only of the English fasels but also of the Spanish frijoles, a kind of kidney bean often fried and eaten as a side dish.