Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. A light, soft-textured sweetened biscuit.
- n. Sweet raised bread dried and browned in an oven.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. A kind of light, hard cake or bread, as for ships' stores.
- n. Bread or cake dried and browned in the oven, and reduced to crumbs by pounding, the crumbs being usually eaten with milk.
- n. A kind of light cake; a kind of soft, sweetened biscuit.
- To make rusk of; convert, as bread or cake, into rusk. See rusk, n.
Wiktionary
- n. a rectangular, hard, dry biscuit
- n. a twice-baked bread, slices of bread baked until they are hard and crisp (also called a zwieback)
- n. a weening food for children
- n. a cereal binder used in meat product manufacture
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. A kind of light, soft bread made with yeast and eggs, often toasted or crisped in an oven; or, a kind of sweetened biscuit.
- n. A kind of light, hard cake or bread, as for stores.
- n. Bread or cake which has been made brown and crisp, and afterwards grated, or pulverized in a mortar.
WordNet 3.0
- n. slice of sweet raised bread baked again until it is brown and hard and crisp
Etymologies
- Spanish or Portuguese rosca, coil, rusk, perhaps from Vulgar Latin *rotisca, diminutive of Latin rota, wheel; see rotate.
Examples
“In front of Mrs. Minister stood a very large yellow bowl filled with what she called rusk -- a preparation unfamiliar to me, made by browning and crushing the crusts of bread and then rolling them down into a coarse meal.”
“Just now her rusk was the all-absorbing topic of thought.”
St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, July 1878, No. 9
“Not only had he most intelligently brought me a fresh ice, but he had brought the particular kind of rusk for which I had asked.”
“Oliver's Channel 4 series, Jamie's School Dinners, exposed Matthews's Twizzlers as consisting largely of water, rusk, pork fat and coating, with only one third of "mechanically recovered" turkey meat in the recipe.”
The Guardian: Marco Pierre White's secret plan to steal Jamie Oliver's school dinner thunder
“Her suggestions include Consommé à l'Estragon, the whites of a couple of eggs whisked into it at the last moment; Natural Meat Jelly, served on a rusk; and, for a main course, a "fresh or slightly pickled tongue" or perhaps a mixed grill, starring mutton cutlets, or devilled game.”
“Walls is Walls and unpretentious but with quite a high rusk content.”
“My hands shook, no doubt from strain and also from weakness–we had been eating a rusk a day for four days…but our column was fresh from Leningrad and we had seen people starving to death.”
“The exposed crust is rusk-like crunchy in nice contrast to the soft, creamy custard-soaked bread in the center.”
“But here it was on Pico, sitting scooped on a rusk of croissant: airy froth with just a mellow afterthought of coffee flavor.”
“My father goes to Scotland on holiday now and then and brings back the rusk along with the spices.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘rusk’.
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Surprising four-letter words
I imagine most of these will be Anglo-Saxon, not likely to crop up in the average day's conversation, and thus excellent for Scrabble. ("most" is too common, likewise "will" and even "crop", in an...
blet, quim, clit, buff, sire, wiki, blog, loam, waft, heft, mare, lilt and 68 more...
hernesheir cf. biscotti, cantucci, and Zwieback. Jan 3, 2009
bilby Not to be confusied with russk, which is what Russkies eat. Oct 11, 2008