Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A salad of shredded raw cabbage and sometimes shredded carrots, dressed with mayonnaise or a vinaigrette.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A dish consisting of finely cut cabbage dressed with vinegar, salt, pepper, etc., eaten either raw or slightly cooked; cabbage-salad. Also called, erroneously, cold-slaw.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun A salad made of sliced cabbage.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A salad of finely shredded raw cabbage and sometimes shredded carrots, dressed with mayonnaise (white) or a vinaigrette (red).

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun basically shredded cabbage

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Dutch koolsla : kool, cabbage (from Middle Dutch cōle, from Latin caulis) + sla, salad (short for salade, from French, from Old French; see salad).]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Dutch koolsla, from kool ("cabbage") + sla, abbreviation of salade.

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Examples

Comments

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  • WordNet's cooking lessons have not proven to be a runaway success.

    October 3, 2008

  • Ew, the second definition has that horrible m-word in it! As if I needed any other reasons to hate coleslaw.

    October 3, 2008

  • All the more reprehensible since it isn't really a necessary word to describe "dressing."

    October 3, 2008

  • "Moist dressing" makes me want to take a shower.

    October 3, 2008

  • Etymology is worth a look for the fact we don't have a huge number of modern Dutch words in English.

    October 3, 2008

  • Absolutely. I love that this is one of the few holdovers from the Dutch settlement of New York (even old New York was once New Amsterdam). Which gives me an opportunity to plug one of my favorite books, Russell Shorto's The Island at the Center of the World, seen here.

    And I rather like coleslaw, myself. But I object strenuously to the term "moist dressing."

    October 3, 2008

  • See slaw (Margery Daw).

    July 28, 2011