Gumbo

Pronunciation

• Rhymes: -ÊŒmbəʊ

Origin

From ngombo, kingombo ("okra plant"), possibly via Gullah.

Oxford American Dictionaries

The Chambers Dictionary, 1994, ISBN 0-550-10255-8

Cognate to Portuguese quiabo, Caribbean Spanish guingambó, and cognates in other Romance languages.

Full definition of gumbo

Noun

1. (countable) The okra plant or its pods.
2. (uncountable) A soup or stew made with okra.
3. (uncountable) A fine silty soil that when wet becomes very thick and heavy.
• 1909, Ralph Connor, The Foreigner, ch. 11:The team stuck fast in the black muck, and every effort to extricate them served only to imbed them more hopelessly in the sticky gumbo.
• 1914 April, "Making Good Roads by Firing Poor Ones," Popular Mechanics, p. 567:There are no poorer roads in all the United States than the "gumbo" roads of the south—gumbo being the name give a certain kind of mud or clay that is particularly sticky, clings tenaciously, seems to have no bottom, and will not support any weight.
• 1950 July 3, "Labor: Trouble at Lowland," Time:The red gumbo soil uttered ugly sucking sounds at the touch of a man's boot.

Synonyms

• (okra plant) okra, ladies' fingers