Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun A cut of meat, especially of beef, from the upper part of the loin just in front of the round.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun The loin, or upper part of the loin, of beef, or part covering either kidney.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun A loin of beef, or a part of a loin.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun A cut of
beef from the lower part of the ribs
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun the portion of the loin (especially of beef) just in front of the rump
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
Support
Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word sirloin.
Examples
-
I also noticed that your ground sirloin is much higher than here.
New Construction? 2006
-
I also noticed that your ground sirloin is much higher than here.
New Construction? 2006
-
I also noticed that your ground sirloin is much higher than here.
New Construction? 2006
-
I also noticed that your ground sirloin is much higher than here.
New Construction? 2006
-
I also noticed that your ground sirloin is much higher than here.
New Construction? 2006
-
I also noticed that your ground sirloin is much higher than here.
New Construction? 2006
-
I also noticed that your ground sirloin is much higher than here.
New Construction? 2006
-
I also noticed that your ground sirloin is much higher than here.
New Construction? 2006
-
I also noticed that your ground sirloin is much higher than here.
New Construction? 2006
-
I also noticed that your ground sirloin is much higher than here.
New Construction? 2006
qroqqa commented on the word sirloin
So named from being the upper (sur "over") part of the loin.
The fiction that it comes from being knighted dates from at least 1655: Thomas Fuller in his Church-history of Britain adds the parenthesis '(so knighted, saith tradition, by this King Henry)' (sc. Henry VIII). It is, however, just a fiction. Swift ascribed the accolade to James I, but presumably not seriously, as it was in his satirical manual Polite Conversation.
July 30, 2008
bilby commented on the word sirloin
"The word surloin or sirloin is often said to be derived from the fact that the loin was knighted as Sir Loin by Charles II, or (according to early 19c. English dictionary writer Charles Richardson) by James I. Chronology makes short work of this statement; the word being in use long before James I was born. It is one of those unscrupulous inventions with which English 'etymology' abounds, and which many people admire because they are 'so clever.' The number of those who literally prefer a story about a word to a more prosaic account of it, is only too large." - Walter W. Skeat, 'An Etymological Dictionary of the English Language', 1882
March 11, 2024