Salisbury steak
- noun
- /ˈsɔːlzbəri steɪk/
- US
- The phone rang at a little after seven as Dubinsky was finishing his microwaved frozen Salisbury steak with potatoes and a dish of vanilla ice cream washed down by decaffeinated coffee.
- Salisbury steak dinner
- Salisbury steak TV dinner
- lunch of Salisbury steak
Examples
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Our lunches consisted of Salisbury steaks and fried white fish.
Fiction book (2002) -
At home, Bernstein popped in a Stouffer's Salisbury steak, opened a small can of corn niblets, and another of stewed tomatoes, which he set to warming on the stove.
Fiction book (1995) -
It's $10 for a Salisbury steak and a free side.
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Today our menu is Salisbury steak.
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Salisbury steak medium for you, sir.
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Rita picks at her Salisbury steak special, trying to deal with the business at hand.
Fiction book (2001) -
The Salisbury steak's pretty good, but this lasagne is tremendous.
Fiction book (1995) -
Moe claims her favorite traditional TV dinners are Salisbury steak and chicken pot pies, but there's no telling what Thiemann will use for inspiration in creating his TV dinner masterpiece.
Blog text (29) -
I ordered a Salisbury steak with mushroom gravy for dinner.
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The restaurant is famous for its tasty Salisbury steak served with mashed potatoes.
Synonyms
A flat round piece of cooked ground beef used in burgers
A flat piece of ground beef that is cooked and served as a main dish
A cooked flat piece of ground beef served without a bun
A flat piece of cooked ground beef served without a bun, often with gravy
A flat round patty of ground beef often served as a main dish
Surface Forms
Morphology
Salisbury + steak
The compound is built from a proper name plus 'steak', so a learner who knows both words will reasonably infer it denotes a type of steak or meat dish; the basic idea (a meat dish) is compositional. However, 'Salisbury' is an eponym that does not reveal the specific preparation (ground beef patty with sauce/gravy), so the precise sense is not fully predictable without prior exposure.
Etymology
Salisbury steak is named after Dr. James Salisbury, a doctor in the 1800s who served seasoned, ground beef to his patients as a kind of 'health food'. He called the minced meat a steak, so the name Salisbury + steak came to mean a 'steak' made from ground beef, which is the dish we call by that name today.