dumpling

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   a small mass of dough cooked by boiling, steaming, frying, or baking, sometimes wrapped around a filling

   They served the stew with a hot dumpling in each bowl.

2. 2
   noun

   A term of endearment.

   My little dumpling.

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”).

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