Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. New England Any of several thick stews, originally an oatmeal porridge.
- n. Chiefly Kentucky & Southern Illinois A spicy stew made of poultry, game, other meats, and vegetables, usually cooked outdoors.
- n. Chiefly Kentucky & Southern Illinois A picnic featuring such a stew.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. A seamen's term for a dish made of boiled oatmeal seasoned with salt, butter, and sugar; gruel.
- n. A kind of soup made with many different kinds of meat and vegetables, highly peppered and served very hot: popular in Kentucky and other places, especially at barbecues, picnics, and other outdoor feasts.
- n. A barbecue, picnic, or woodland feast at which the soup burgoo is served.
Wiktionary
- n. nautical a seafaring dish from the days of sail; a sort of porridge seasoned with sugar, salt and butter
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. A kind of oatmeal pudding, or thick gruel, used by seamen.
WordNet 3.0
- n. a gathering at which burgoo stew is served
- n. porridge made of rolled oats
- n. thick spicy stew of whatever meat and whatever vegetables are available; southern United States
Etymologies
- Dialectical burgood ("yeast"), perhaps from Welsh burym ("yeast") + cawl ("cabbage, gruel"). (Wiktionary)
- Perhaps alteration of ragout. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“The burgoo was a mixture of oatmeal and scraps of beef fat that had simmered all night on the galley stove.”
“As soon as this meeting was over, I took the midnight train for Dayton, where a "burgoo" feast was to be held the next day on the fair grounds.”
Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet An Autobiography.
“I wondered if Jack was still "cleaning up" at pontoon, if Fred was getting his parcels again, and if Charley was still making those famous "burgoo" puddings.”
“His most recent venture, a collaboration with the National Archives called America Eats Tavern, is a place where historic dishes like Kentucky burgoo and mock turtle soup serve as a love letter to his adopted country.”
The Wall Street Journal: José Andrés Wants to Feed the World (And You)
““It reminds me of the burgoo we had in Louisville,” Graham said.”
“Chowder still means New England, Kentucky is burgoo, and the low country is Frogmore stew.”
“Stews such as Brunswick stew and its spicier Kentucky cousin, burgoo, were a nineteenth-century hodgepodge of whatever was at hand, including small game such as squirrel and rabbit, beans, and shoe-peg corn.”
“And in the FOR ME column of our imagined list, not in the treasured top slots but up there, would be the gift of Joycean spam upon a digital reemergence: boltmaker stippled scrapy heartedness burgoo overplentiful unended hydrophobous.”
“Looking for a weekend full of more "cultured" events than eating burgoo and frolicing through Canberra's flowers?”
“I'm not crazy about serving dishes like burgoo, a nasty stew of beef, lamb and chicken or Hot Brown Sandwiches; turkey and bacon smothered in a cheese sauce.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘burgoo’.
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Derby Day!
List of terms one could expect to hear or read in connection with the Kentucky Derby, or high-stakes horse racing in general. This is an open list.
morning line, filly, field, post, favorite, two-year-old, colt, three-year-old, lifetime starts, trained, trainer, owner and 91 more...
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Oats
avener, avenor, avenary, potato-oat, haver, haver-grass, haverbread, havercake, avercake, oats, groats, rolled oats and 51 more...
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The Aubrey/Maturin List I'm Gonna Mak...
I'm wading through Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey/Maturin novels one by one, and someday, I'll wade through them again and list all the words I learned while reading them.
Edit: I started ma...studdingsail, carronade, mumchance, grumlin-futtocks, crosscat-harpings, holystone, sennit, orlop, orchitis, negus, kevel, altumal and 1112 more...
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summer words 2009
how many words can I make mine this summer?
largess, hoyden, catholic, fornicatress, quean, slattern, bildungsroman, sybaritic, descresent, nodus, frittle, callipygian and 529 more...
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Maineisms
Some of these were taken from older literature and have fallen out of use in the past few decades, but many are still used today in the same way they were used a century ago. By no means a compreh...
Yankeedom, wizzled, wing and wing, wickie-up, whiffletree, weewaw, wangan, wainy, upstair, twice-laid, tunket, trig and 136 more...
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Spelling Bee list 2011
Abalone, ablution, absolution, aboriginally, abstemious, academician, acclamation, accommodation, acculturation, acetic, acetone, acme and 590 more...
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Fun menu items
spotted dick, bubble and squeak, toad in the hole, pets de nonnes, pigs in a blanket, prairie oysters, ropa vieja, manchamanteles, arme ritter, schwalbennester, strammer max, cabeza de gato and 119 more...
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On The Menu
diver scallop, grilled porcini, lavender-fennel p..., roasted cranberri..., carmelized walnut..., cardamom-molasses..., bittersweet choco..., rosemary flatbread, eggplant veloute, fennel gratin, rollmops, jugged hare and 122 more...
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Into the mix
A medley of mixtures, mostly ones where the constituents are still distinct. I tagged kinds of stew.
mixture, commixture, admixture, intermixture, intermingling, commingling, mingling, marriage, union, integration, syncretion, permutation and 129 more...
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...a list from a notebook...
I found several pages of words in an old notebook. By the looks of it, they were words I learnt some time ago (and subsequently wrote down) from books by Patrick O'Brian and China Mieville, two aut...
trabacaloes, jocosity, ordnance, transom, douceur, purser, nostrum, gaby, sea-lawyer, bowsprit, officious, hobnailed and 124 more...
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Yuck
Icky, ooey things, grossness or sundry objectionables.
quaggy, gurry, trepan, head cheese, bodewash, casu marzu, lardon, balut, nidhoggr, tarantelli, dairy group, vesiga and 58 more...
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Words from freerice.com
foolscap, tabor, pilus, carom, pomelo, pluton, bulbul, dhole, duenna, poniard, breviary, bollix and 88 more...
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live thriving words
IE roots of bhel- and a few others
bless, blossom, foil, foliage, folio, folium, cinquefoil, defoliate, exfoliate, feuilleton, perfoliate, milfoil and 67 more...
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More gruel?
gruel, porridge, oatmeal, grits, hominy, samp, mush, brose, burgoo, maypo, frumenty, stirabout and 29 more...
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soup words
soup words
gazpacho, minestrone, consomme, avgolemono, chowder, bouillabaisse, borscht, bouillon, mulligatawny, vichyssoise, albondigas, bisque and 47 more...
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My New Words
Tweets
Looking for tweets for burgoo.
madmouth also spoon-meat; loblolly Jul 7, 2009
chained_bear "...the steward gave them each a hot bowl of burgoo, a kind of liquid porridge."
--Patrick O'Brian, The Far Side of the World, Feb 23, 2008