dumpling

Reading level: hard

Estimated CEFR level: C2 — Proficiency

Estimated from word frequency; not an official CEFR classification.

Definition

  1. noun small balls or strips of boiled or steamed dough
  2. noun dessert made by baking fruit wrapped in pastry

Etymology

A folk word, first attested in c. 1600s, apparently from a Norfolk (East Anglian) dialect, of uncertain origin: * perhaps from some Low German word (compare dümpeln (“bobbing up and down”)), * or from the rare dialectal adjective dump (“lump, of the consistency of dough”) (first attested in the late 1800s), + -ling (diminutive suffix), although dumpling is recorded much earlier. However, compare dumpy (“short and stout”).

In classic literature

Synonyms

dumplings

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