An edible object is something safe to eat. If a mushroom is edible, you can eat it without getting sick. If a plant's berries are edible, they won't poison you. The word tells you whether something can be eaten, not whether it tastes good.

When you're hiking and see bright red berries, you might wonder if they're edible. Many plants produce edible fruits and seeds, but others are toxic. People who study wild plants learn which ones are edible and which ones to avoid. Even some flowers are edible: nasturtiums and pansies can be added to salads, though most people grow them just for their beauty.

You might hear someone say that food at a restaurant was “barely edible” when it tasted terrible but wasn't actually harmful. Or when someone bakes cookies that turn out burned and hard, they might joke that the results “aren't even edible,” meaning too awful to eat even though they wouldn't make you sick.

Things that aren't edible are called inedible. Your pencil is inedible. So is tree bark, even though some animals can digest it just fine. Whether something is edible depends partly on the creature eating it: chocolate is edible for humans but toxic to dogs, so it should never be given to them.