kebab
Pluralkebabs
Verbkebabs, kebabbing, kebabbed
Pluralkebabs
Formskebabs, kebabbing, kebabbed
- 1Any food, especially cubes of meat or vegetables, cooked on a skewer or spit.
She threaded chunks of beef and pepper onto each kebab before grilling.
The caterer served vegetable kebabs alongside the grilled corn.
Note
In American usage the skewer itself is the unit. One kebab is one loaded skewer, so a cook makes beef kebabs or vegetable kebabs and counts them by the stick. Shish kebab is the full name behind the short form, but the plain word stretches to anything threaded and grilled, with or without meat.
- 2A dish made by roasting pieces of meat, fish, or vegetables on a skewer or spit, especially the type known as a doner.
He ordered a large doner kebab with garlic sauce after the match.
Late-night kebabs are a familiar sight outside city pubs.
Note
English took the word from Arabic kabāb, partly by way of Urdu, Persian and Turkish kebap. Cevapi is a doublet, the same word reaching English by another road. In British use the bare word leans toward the doner, so a late-night kebab is usually one. American English pictures the skewer instead, as in the American skewer sense, so the same order can call up different food on each side of the Atlantic.
- 3A handheld wrap of round, unleavened bread filled with pieces of meat roasted on an upright skewer, fresh vegetables, and sauces.
He unwrapped his kebab and the garlic sauce ran down his fingers.
They sell kebabs stuffed with shaved lamb, chopped salad, and chili sauce.
Note
Australian English fixes the word on the finished, hand-held wrap. The meat from the upright skewer comes rolled in round flatbread with salad and sauce, ready to be eaten on the move. A visitor expecting skewered cubes, as an American might, will be handed something closer to a sandwich.
- 4A restaurant or shop that specializes in selling kebabs.
She works evenings at the kebab near the train station.
Half the kebabs in town stay open past midnight.
Note
Here a shop is named after what it sells, and it takes the article and prepositions of a place: you go to the kebab or meet at the kebab after a night out. The tone is casual and spoken. Without the article and a verb of movement, the same sentence would be about food rather than a destination.
- 5To roast meat, fish, or vegetables on a skewer, in the manner of a kebab.
She kebabed the shrimp and peppers before setting them over the fire.
Many cooks kebab cubes of marinated beef for the barbecue.
Similarskewer
Note
As a transitive verb it takes the food as its object: you kebab the shrimp, not the fire. In its inflected forms the final b doubles before an ending: kebabbed, kebabbing, while kebabs keeps a single b. The spelling with one b also appears in print, but the doubled form is the standard pattern.
- 6A menu icon made of three vertical dots, used in software to reveal additional options.
Users tap the kebab to reveal options such as edit, share, and delete.
The designer tucked the rarely used tools behind a single kebab.
Note
Interface designers named the icon after the dish: three dots stacked vertically, like pieces threaded on an upright skewer. It marks a hidden menu of secondary actions, so users tap or click the kebab rather than read it. The word is countable and concrete, and it names the control itself, not the options it opens.
- 7To stab or pierce someone or something, as though running a skewer through it.
The swordfish thrashed across the deck and almost kebabbed the deckhand with its bill.
A stray spear can kebab anyone standing too close.
Similarstab, pierce, spear, impale, jab
Note
Slang that turns the cook's skewer on people, with a grim, half-joking edge. Julian Roup uses it in 2003 for a pommel that "almost kebabbed" him. Simon Sebag Montefiore's Jerusalem (2011) uses it for a mob's atrocity. It shares the doubled-b forms of the cooking verb. Run through or spear says the same thing without the dark joke.
- 8The outward-growing, plate-like portions that branch from the central core of a shish-kebab crystal structure.
The kebabs nucleate along the shish and grow out perpendicular to it.
Researchers measured how quickly each kebab thickened during crystallization.
Note
Polymer chemists borrowed the whole dish to describe a crystal shape. A long central fibril of extended chains, the shish, carries plate-like lamellae that nucleate on it and grow outward at right angles. Those plates are the kebabs. The two words work as a pair of countable nouns, so researchers speak of kebabs forming along a shish and of how each one thickens.
- 9A vulgar slang term for the vulva.
He muttered something vulgar about her kebab and got thrown out of the bar.
After a few drinks she joked that her bikini barely covered her kebab.
Note
Coarse British slang, used in crude jokes and insults rather than in any neutral talk about the body. It shares its spelling with the everyday food word, so the vulgar reading depends entirely on context. In any setting where offense matters, vulva or a milder term is the safe choice.
- 10An offensive slang term for a Muslim, typically one of southern European, Middle Eastern, or North African descent.
The mob jeered and called the shopkeeper a kebab as he locked up.
Hateful posts dismissed the refugees as nothing but kebabs.
Note
Here the name of a dish is turned into an ethnic slur, reducing a person and their faith to a food linked with their background. It is hostile in every setting and has no neutral or affectionate use. When writing about hate speech, quote it rather than use it. Context sets it sharply apart from the everyday dish, which carries none of this charge.
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Practice
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Origin
This word comes from Arabic كَبَاب (kabāb), reaching English partly through Urdu, Persian, and Turkish kebap. It is a doublet of cevapi.