💔 To fall apart 🍰 A small piece

crumble

11 2.3

A small piece that breaks off from bread or cake

noun
/ˈkrʌm.bəl/

: miga

The crumbles of land that had broken loose felt like marbles against the thin soles of his sneakers.

Then we're going to have like pie crust crumbles in the shake.

Examples

You really want to keep all the crumbles, OK?
I love making pies, crumbles, and cobblers with apples; somehow I feel I'm eating healthier!

Blog text (8)
We're doing a deep dish apple crumble pie.
So today I have decided to do some apple crumble cupcakes.
I also brought leftover crumble from yesterday.
You may want to try the steak kidney pie... followed by the apple crumble.

31 (2016)
And then for dessert, we have apple crumble with custard.
We're going to be making some apple crumble, gluten free, vegan apple crumble, and I'll take you with me.
So this is a cheddar based crumble with white sharp cheddar.
For dessert, we enjoyed a warm apple crumble topped with vanilla ice cream.

Synonyms

crumb

vscrumble

96 1.0

A very small piece of bread, cake, or other baked food

is the general term for a small broken piece from food

breadcrumb

vscrumble

11 2.4

Small pieces of dry bread that you put on food before cooking

is a broader small broken piece not limited to processed dried bread

crum

vscrumble

Archaic

9.9

A small piece of bread or food

is the modern common name rather than the dialect form

How Small

speck

66 1.3

crumble

11 2.3

fragment

184 3.2

to chunk

1 3.2

Surface Forms

crumble singular

crumbles plural

Morphology

crumble = crumb (semi-transparent) = crumb + le

The noun 'crumble' is derived from 'crumb' with the addition of a frequentative suffix '-le', indicating a small piece or fragment.

Etymology

Crumble as a noun comes from the same word crumb, meaning 'a very small piece', and so a 'crumble' is one of those tiny bits left when food breaks or is eaten, like the little crumbs on a plate.