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Definitions

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

  1. n. Cold cooked rice dressed with vinegar that is shaped into bite-sized pieces and topped with raw or cooked fish, or formed into a roll with fish, egg, or vegetables and wrapped in seaweed.

Wiktionary

  1. n. An adopted quasi-Japanese delicacy of raw fish as sashimi (just thinly sliced raw fish without rice), sushi rolls (raw fish and/or vegetables, wrapped in sticky white rice, in turn wrapped in seaweed, then cut into several 1” pieces), or nigiri sushi (a oblong brick of white rice 2” x 1/2” x 1/2” with wasabi and a gourmet slice of raw fish on top).
  2. n. A Japanese dish of vinegared, short-grained, sticky white rice with various other ingredients, usually raw fish, other types of seafood, or vegetables. It is prepared in various forms, including nigiri sushi (an oblong, bite-sized rice brick topped with wasabi and a gourmet slice of raw fish or another single high-quality ingredient), sushi rolls (rice and chopped ingredients wrapped as a log in a sheet of dried seaweed, then cut into bite-sized circular pieces), and temaki sushi (rice with multiple other ingredients held in a large crispy cone of dried seaweed).

WordNet 3.0

  1. n. rice (with raw fish) wrapped in seaweed

Etymologies

  1. Japanese.

Examples

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Lists

These user-created lists contain the word ‘sushi’.

Comments

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  • hernesheir *Slaps thews in genuine mirth.* Sep 30, 2011

  • sionnach Miss Bacon was later admitted to an upscale New York clinic, suffering from fulgurant fugu addiction. It is not known whether or not she was ever cured.

    Guffaws childishly, slapping thighs in simulated mirth. Sep 30, 2011

  • hernesheir "Alice Mabel Bacon, who spent much time in Japan, introduced the word "sushi" into the English language in 1893, in her book A Japanese Interior. It is doubtful that this sushi, which she described as "rice sandwiches," was made with fish. We do know that the "sushi" included on the menu of a Japanese dinner in the fall of 1894 at the Club of All Nations in Manhattan was not. Almost 30 years later, in the spring of 1924, "sushi" was served on the lawn of the Vanderlip estate, in Scarborough-on-Hudson, at a fund-raising event for a women's college in Tokyo, but it is almost certain that no raw fish was involved. All these early references to sushi are likely to variations of the simple treats of sweet sushi rice wrapped in seaweed or in little soybean cakes that were so popular among Japanese children. Source & citation. Sep 30, 2011

  • madmouth archetypal sushi Jun 23, 2009

  • chained_bear True, and many varieties of what we know as "sushi" are not even raw. Jun 22, 2009

  • rocioo The only thing you need to remember is that sushi is not a raw fish. Sushi means vinegared rice. June 18th was purported as being National Sushi Day, even though no one had ever heard of it before. It seems to be one of those internet holidays, made up by marketing departments to get people to buy stuff – it's not as if that isn't a distinct possibility. Most people who have written about it so far have all pointed out that they had never heard of National Sushi Day, and that it is probably spurious. At any rate, those who go for it might file into Japanese restaurants and get in on celebrating the suspicious National Sushi Day. Jun 22, 2009

  • frangarnes Sushi @ Wikipedia (Spanish) Oct 21, 2007

  • chained_bear For interesting conversation, see ostrich fern. Oct 21, 2007

‘sushi’ has been looked up 1576 times, loved by 2 people, added to 39 lists, commented on 8 times, and has a Scrabble score of 8.