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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

pilaf.

A dish made by browning grain, typically rice, in oil and then cooking it with a seasoned broth, to which meat and/or vegetables may be added.

5 characters2 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/pɪlɐːf/Australia/piːlɑːf/Received-Pronunciation/piːlæf/General-American
  1. A dish made by browning grain, typically rice, in oil and then cooking it with a seasoned broth, to which meat and/or vegetables may be added.

    countable · uncountable
Where this word comes from

Borrowed from Ottoman Turkish پلاو (modern Turkish pilav), from Classical Persian پلاو (pilāw), from Hindi पुलाव (pulāv)/Urdu پُلاؤ (pulāo), from Sauraseni Prakrit *𑀧𑀼𑀮𑀸𑀕 (*pulāga), from Sanskrit पुलाक (pulāka), which is probably of Dravidian origin. Akin to Tamil புழுக்கு (puḻukku, “cooked rice”). Doublet of pulao.

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.