pudding

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English poding, also puding and pudding,^[2][3] probably borrowed from Anglo-Norman bodin (“sausage; in the plural, entrails”), also bodeyn,^[4][5][2] with the ending altered after nouns in -ing.^[4] The same word is Old French boudin (“sausage, blood sausage”), recorded from about 1270.^[4][6] The initial p- is not paralleled in French and is irregular;^[4][7] Etymonline and Klein compare purse.^[7][8] The English word seems to be implied earlier by Medieval Latin pudingum, about 1245 in a British source, probably taken from English.^[4] Several dictionaries trace the French word to Latin botellus (“sausage, small intestine”),^[9][10][11] Ayto through a Vulgar Latin diminutive *botellīnus;^[12][7] Ayto names the Latin word as the source of botulism;^[12] Weekley and the Shorter Oxford link it with bowel.^[13][9] The OED calls the further etymology uncertain and disputed,^[4] and Klein thought the French word imitative.^[8] Another view, given by Etymonline, Skeat and Merriam-Webster, connects pudding with a Germanic stem Proto-West Germanic *pud- (“to swell”), seen in Old English puduc (“a wen”),^{[7][14][15][16]} Low German puddewurst (“black pudding”) and puddig (“thick, swollen”),^{[14][7][15][17]} and compares pudgy.^[7] The word was borrowed back as French pouding, German Pudding and Dutch pudding.^[7][13][3]

Earliest recorded meaning

The stomach or one of the entrails of a pig, sheep or other animal stuffed with minced meat, suet and seasoning, a kind of sausage: 1287, in the Norwich leet records.^[4][3] Barnhart finds Pudding as a surname already in 1176.^[3]

Semantic evolution

Ayto and the Oxford Dictionary of Word Origins explain the change of meaning through the casing: the stuffed gut led to any food tied up in a bag and boiled, sweet or savoury.^[12][11] The OED records the dish of flour, milk and eggs from about 1543,^[4] Barnhart food boiled or steamed in a bag or cloth from 1544,^[3] and Etymonline the flour, milk and egg dish, often with raisins, by 1670.^[7] Johnson (1755) defined it as a food of many kinds, generally made of meal, milk and eggs.^[18] The older sense survives in black pudding.^[11][12] In Shakespeare's Henry IV, Part 1 (1598) it is a stuffing roasted inside the animal.^[4][15] From the early 16th century the plural meant the bowels or guts,^[4] a use the English Dialect Dictionary records across Scotland and England.^[19] From 1556 to 1910 it was also a figure for material reward, contrasted with empty praise.^[4] Sailors used it from the early 17th century for rope padding that prevents chafing.^[4] In North America a pudding became a cold custard-like dessert (1896),^[4] while in Britain it came to mean any sweet dish and the sweet course of a meal (1934);^[4][12] the Oxford Dictionary of Word Origins notes that by the end of the 19th century the sweet pudding had become the dominant meaning.^[11] The phrase over-egg the pudding, to overdo something, refers to using so many eggs that the pudding does not set.^[11] In slang the word has also meant the vagina, from 1538.^[20]

Timeline

• 1176 – Pudding as a surname.^[3]
• 1287 – a stuffed animal stomach or entrail, a kind of sausage.^[4][3]
• early 16th century – plural, the bowels or guts.^[4]
• c. 1543 – a boiled, steamed or baked dish of flour, milk and eggs.^[4]
• 1556 – figurative, material reward (obsolete by 1910).^[4]
• 1598 – a stuffing roasted inside an animal, in Shakespeare.^[4]
• early 17th century – nautical, rope padding against chafing.^[4]
• 1711 – verb, nautical, to wrap with rope.^[4]
• 1896 – North American, a cold custard-like dessert.^[4]
• 1934 – chiefly British, any sweet dessert; the dessert course.^[4]

Meanings

Noun

1. A cooked sweet dish, usually soft, made with flour, milk, eggs and often fruit: She baked a bread pudding with the stale loaf.^[21][4]
2. A soft savoury dish made partly of pastry, batter or a cereal: Yorkshire pudding.^[21][15][4]
3. (chiefly British) The sweet course of a meal; dessert.^[21][4]
4. (North American) A creamy dessert like custard, made of milk, sugar and a thickener.^[4][15]
5. A sausage of seasoned minced meat, oatmeal and the like, stuffed into a skin and boiled: black pudding.^[21][15][4]
6. (archaic or dialect) In the plural, the bowels or guts.^[4][15][19]
7. (obsolete) A stuffing roasted inside an animal.^[4][15]

Verb

1. (nautical) To wrap a rope, cable or spar with padding to prevent chafing.^[4][9]

Word family

• puddinglike
• puddingstone
• black pudding
• cabinet pudding
• Christmas pudding
• cottage pudding
• hasty pudding
• Indian pudding

Related words

• boudin
• botulism
• bowel
• pudgy

References

1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b Kurath, Hans; Kuhn, Sherman M.; Lewis, Robert E., eds. (1952–2001), Middle English Dictionary, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press; online edition ed. Frances McSparran et al. (2000–2018)
3. ^ a b c d e f g Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z 27 28 29 30 31 Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
5. ^ The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
6. ^ Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
7. ^ a b c d e f g h Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
8. ^ a b Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
9. ^ a b c Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
10. ^ Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
11. ^ a b c d e Cresswell, Julia (2021), Oxford Dictionary of Word Origins, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
12. ^ a b c d e Ayto, John (2005), Word Origins: The Secret Histories of English Words from A to Z, 2nd ed., London: A & C Black
13. ^ a b Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray
14. ^ a b Skeat, Walter W. (1911), A Concise Etymological Dictionary of the English Language, new ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
15. ^ a b c d e f g h Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
16. ^ Bosworth, Joseph; Toller, T. Northcote (1898), An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press; Toller, T. Northcote (1921), Supplement
17. ^ Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
18. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
19. ^ a b Wright, Joseph, ed. (1898–1905), The English Dialect Dictionary, 6 vols., Oxford: Henry Frowde; via EDD Online 4.0, University of Innsbruck (CC BY 4.0)
20. ^ Green, Jonathon (2010), Green's Dictionary of Slang, London: Chambers; digital ed. 2016–, https://greensdictofslang.com
21. ^ a b c d Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins