dumpling
Pluraldumplings
- 1A food made of a dough wrapper folded around a savory or sweet filling and then cooked.
Like a small parcel where the dough is the wrapping and the filling is the gift.
She pleated the edges of each dumpling before setting a whole tray over the steam.
The restaurant serves pork dumplings with a soy-and-vinegar dipping sauce.
Note
The wrapper defines this sense: dough closed around a filling, savory or sweet. Because the filling is what tells one from another, it usually leads the name, as in pork dumplings. This is the chiefly American picture of the dish, so on a British menu the bare word may still suggest the plain dough ball.
- 2A ball of dough cooked in stews and other sauced dishes; also a thick noodle.
Like a sponge of dough that swells and takes on the flavor of the stew around it.
The beef stew was topped with light, fluffy dumplings made from suet and flour.
He spooned a dumpling onto his plate alongside the braised lamb.
Note
Unfilled dough cooked in the sauce is what British speakers chiefly mean by the word. Behind it is a Norfolk folk coinage from around the 1600s, of uncertain origin: perhaps Low German (compare dümpeln, "bobbing up and down"), perhaps the dialect word dump, "a doughy lump", plus -ling. Americans saying the same word more often mean the filled, wrapped kind.
- 3An affectionate name used for a person one loves, such as a partner, child, or grandchild.
He greeted his wife with a warm "Hello, dumpling" as she walked in the door.
Their grandmother called every grandchild dumpling, regardless of age.
Similardarling, sweetheart, honey, sweetie, dear
- 4A piece of excrement; a formed lump of feces.
Someone had to clean up the dumpling the puppy left on the rug.
He scooped the dumplings out of the yard before mowing the lawn.
Similardropping
Note
A joking, mildly vulgar name for a lump of dung, and it often refers to animal droppings. Brent Butt's Corner Gas Animated (2018) lines it up with scat, poo and flop in a tracker's list, which shows where it sits: humorous and casual, never clinical. Keep it out of formal writing, and expect a laugh if the food meaning is also in the room.
Practice
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Origin
A folk word first attested around the 1600s, apparently from a Norfolk (East Anglian) dialect and of uncertain origin. It may come from a Low German word (compare dümpeln, "bobbing up and down"), or from the rare dialect adjective dump ("lump, of a dough-like consistency") plus the diminutive suffix -ling, though dumpling is recorded much earlier; compare also dumpy ("short and stout").