purée

Etymology

It is borrowed from French purée,^[2][3][4][5] recorded in Old French from 1227,^[2] apparently the noun use of the feminine past participle of purer.^[2][6][7] The verb meant to squeeze the moisture out of fruit or vegetables (from 1314) and to pour off the water in which pulses had been soaked, and the OED takes these as specific uses of its meaning "to make clean, purify".^[2] It comes from Latin pūrō (“to purify, cleanse”),^[4][5][8][7] from pūrus (“clean”),^[4][5][8] the source of pure,^[5][9] and the American Heritage Dictionary refers this to Proto-Indo-European *peuə-.^[4] Etymonline calls the French word disputed and uncertain.^[3] The OED says that it is sometimes hard to tell apart from porée (see porray), and compares Medieval Latin purea, pureya and porea, all "pea soup" and apparently taken from Old French.^[2] Weekley hesitated between purer and an identity with Old French porée, from Latin porrum (“leek”).^[10] The noun Anglo-Norman puree (“broth or soup, usually of vegetables”) is recorded from about 1300.^[11]

Earliest recorded meaning

Food pulped and passed through a sieve, or a broth so made: 1707, in Mortimer's Whole Art of Husbandry.^[5][3] The OED's first quotation, in a revised entry, is from Lamb's Royal Cookery of 1710, and Merriam-Webster Unabridged also gives 1710.^[2][7] Hoad and Collins date the word only to the 19th century.^[12][13]

Semantic evolution

The word first named a broth or soup of vegetables, fruit, meat or fish, boiled to a pulp and sieved; it later came to mean any smooth cream of liquidized food.^[2][14] The soup sense survives beside the pulp one.^[7][2] English had earlier taken the related food words porray and purie.^[2] The verb is formed from the noun.^[2][5][3] The OED and Merriam-Webster Unabridged date it to 1899, Barnhart to before 1934, Etymonline to 1934 and the Shorter Oxford to the mid 20th century; the OED records figurative use as well.^{[2][7][5][3][14]}

Timeline

• 1707 – a pulp or broth of food boiled and passed through a sieve.^[5][3] The OED's first quotation is from 1710.^[2]
• 1899 – verb, to make a purée of food.^[2][7] Etymonline dates the verb to 1934.^[3]

Meanings

Noun

1. A smooth, thick pulp of cooked food, such as fruit, vegetables, meat or fish, sieved or liquidized: a purée of roasted carrots.^[13][7][2]
2. A thick, smooth soup with such a pulp as its base.^[7][2]

Verb

1. To make food into a purée: She puréed the pumpkin for the baby.^[13][7][2]

Related words

• pure
• purify
• porray
• porridge

Usage notes

The OED and Collins write the word with the accent, and Merriam-Webster Unabridged enters it as puree.^[2][13][7] The OED's first edition (1909) gave only the unassimilated French pronunciation /pyre/,^[2] which the Shorter Oxford still lists for the noun.^[14] Collins also has puree as a spelling of puri, an Indian deep-fried bread, from Hindi.^[13]

References

1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d e f g Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
4. ^ a b c d The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
5. ^ a b c d e f g h Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
6. ^ Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
7. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
8. ^ a b Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
9. ^ Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
10. ^ Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray
11. ^ Anglo-Norman Dictionary (AND2), Aberystwyth University, anglo-norman.net (2nd ed., 2005–)
12. ^ Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
13. ^ a b c d e Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
14. ^ a b c Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press