Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. A traditional Chinese cuisine in which small portions of a variety of foods, including an assortment of steamed or fried dumplings, are served in succession.
Wiktionary
- n. A Cantonese-style meal traditionally eaten in late morning or early afternoon comprising tea and food typically placed in small steamer baskets or on small plates and often served from carts that move around from table to table in a restaurant.
- n. The food served at a dim sum meal, typically including dumplings, seafood and desserts.
WordNet 3.0
- n. traditional Chinese cuisine; a variety of foods (including several kinds of steamed or fried dumplings) are served successively in small portions
Etymologies
- From Cantonese 點心 (dim2 sam1), Mandarin pinyin: diǎnxin/diǎnxīn). The derivation is unclear. 點 means "dot, point" and 心 means "heart" leading many to translate this "dim sum" as “touch the heart” or “dotted heart.” (Wiktionary)
- Chinese (Cantonese) tímsam, light refreshments, equivalent to Chinese (Mandarin) diacaron.gifn, spot, drop + Chinese (Mandarin) xīn, heart. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“She also started working part-time as a dim sum server at a popular Hong Kong-style restaurant called Ocean Seafood.”
“Her husband leaves at seven in the morning for his job as a dim sum chef at a Chinese restaurant in Daly City, just south of San Francisco, while she almost always stays behind, taking care of their two young sons.”
“She told me that her favorite dim sum dishes are shumai—pork and mushroom dumplings—and ha gow, steamed shrimp wrapped in a thin, translucent dough.”
“A dozen pairs of chopsticks (Rhyme ordered his assistants to lift evidence the way they picked up dim sum at Ming Wa's).”
“You could order a milkshake with your dim sum and have french fries with your General Tso's chicken.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘dim sum’.
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Words that should be heard in songs m...
Inspired by PossibleUnderscore's list of words overused in modern pop music.
giant squid, bamboo, colonic, herbivore, raptor, dodecahedron, largesse, sinuses, dim sum, carburetor, transubstantiation, wife and 54 more...
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sionnach's Words
contumely, fomite, holmgang, poltroon, eleemosynary, obsidian, nugatory, grindcore, felch, recrudescent, pyx, parenteral and 3271 more...
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Nick nacks
I started a list on the Wordie with a different log-in and now I can't find it. Sigh. So I'm starting again. These are monosyllabic double barrels that I like the sound of. Part of our human instin...
riff-raff, ping-pong, hip-hop, flim-flam, op cit, tip-top, mish-mash, flap-dash, nick-nack, lap-top, can-can, slap-dash and 60 more...
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Little Bites
appetizer, antipasto, gravlax, caponata, ceviche, rumaki, drumette, potato skin, crudites, escargot, pu pu, mandram and 55 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for dim sum.
oroboros Faint total? Mar 28, 2010