pudding
Pluralpuddings
- 1A sweet dessert with a texture similar to custard or mousse, but thickened with starch rather than eggs alone.
The diner served a creamy butterscotch pudding in a tall glass.
He whisked the milk and cornstarch until the pudding began to set.
- 2A cake or dessert, usually cooked by boiling or steaming rather than baking.
The Christmas pudding had been steaming on the stove for hours.
She turned the warm sponge pudding out onto a plate and poured custard over it.
- 3The dessert course of a meal; the sweet dish eaten after the main course.
In many British homes, pudding follows the roast on a Sunday afternoon.
The waiter asked whether we wanted pudding or coffee to finish.
Similardessert, sweet, afters, pud
Note
A course rather than a dish. In the UK, Australia and New Zealand, "What's for pudding?" asks about the end of the meal, and the answer can be apple pie or anything sweet. Here the word shares its slot with dessert and sweet, and with the casual afters and the slangier pud. Outside those regions, dessert is the safer word for the course.
- 4A sweet or savory dish made from batter or cooked by boiling or steaming.
In old English kitchens, a pudding might hold minced meat, suet, and spices wrapped in cloth.
A batter pudding rises and crisps at the edges as it bakes.
Note
The broad culinary sense, and the one that keeps the word's meaty past in view. Middle English podynge was a sausage or a stuffed animal stomach, from Old French boudin and Latin botellus, "small intestine." That history explains why savory puddings are no oddity: there are savory custards, popover puddings and bread puddings with cheese. It also explains why the name is tied to boiling or steaming food inside a casing.
- 5A kind of sausage whose main ingredient is blood.
The butcher's pudding was made by simmering pig's blood with oatmeal and packing it into casings.
Sliced thick and fried in the pan, the breakfast pudding tasted of blood and spice.
Note
The sense nearest the word's roots: the Old French boudin behind the general dish sense was itself a blood sausage. Speakers now usually qualify it, saying black pudding in the UK and Ireland, or simply blood sausage. An unqualified "pudding" today points toward the sweeter end of the table.
- 6An affectionate name used for someone dear, such as a child or a partner.
"You did so well today, pudding," she told her daughter.
He kissed her forehead and whispered, "Sleep tight, pudding."
Similardumpling
Note
Affection borrowed from the nursery table, much like dumpling. A grown-up cooing "How is my little pudding?" to a small child shows its natural home, and the diminutive little suits it well. It is a private, cozy word, best kept for children and people who already know they are loved.
- 7A slang term for a fat or overweight person, usually used mockingly.
The other kids teased the new boy, calling him a pudding behind his back.
She bristled at being called a pudding just for enjoying her meals.
Similarfatso, porker, pig, butterball, fatty
Note
An insult that turns the name of a dish against a person's body. It sits beside fatty and porker as slang that mocks rather than describes, so it is never a neutral word for size and is best kept out of anything but deliberately rude speech. The same soft, homely image that makes the term of endearment sound affectionate is what makes this use sting.
- 8A slang term for the entrails or internal organs of an animal.
The butcher tossed the pudding into a bucket as he dressed the carcass.
Hunters traditionally removed the pudding soon after the kill to keep the meat fresh.
Note
The word turned back on its origins in stuffed stomachs and sausages: here the puddings are the guts themselves, usually in the plural. A 1715 letter reports a wounded captain "soe that his puddings hang out." Francis Grose's Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue (1785) records the threat "I'll let out your puddings." Its tone is blunt and violent.
Less common meanings
- 9A piece of good fortune or a stroke of luck.
The unexpected inheritance was a pudding that changed his fortunes overnight.
Landing the contract without competition struck them as a remarkable pudding.
Note
Luck pictured as something good to eat. In older slang a pudding was a windfall, much as a stroke of luck or a lucky break is now. The sense is archaic, so a modern listener is likely to hear it as a joke or a mistake. Use it only for period color, and reach for lucky break in ordinary speech.
- 10Food or provisions of any sort; anything edible.
Eat your pudding, slave, and hold your tongue.
1718, Matthew Prior, Merry AndrewSimilarfood, grub, provisions, rations, nourishment
Note
Food of any kind, a sense now gone. Matthew Prior's Merry Andrew (1718) has "Eat your pudding, slave, and hold your tongue," where any meal is meant. Read older texts with this in mind, since a pudding there may be plain provisions rather than a sweet. In modern writing, provisions or fodder carry the meaning.
Practice
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Origin
First recorded around 1305, it comes from Middle English 'podynge' or 'puddynge' meaning a kind of sausage or meat-filled animal stomach, from Old French 'boudin' (blood sausage), from Latin 'botellus' (sausage, small intestine); it is a doublet of 'boudin'. An alternative account traces it instead to a Proto-Germanic root '*put-, *pud-' meaning 'to swell'.