jelly egg
- noun
- /ˈdʒɛli ɛɡ/
- UK
:
huevo de gelatina
- My grandmother fills a basket with jelly eggs every Easter for the grandchildren.
Examples
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She selected a red jelly egg and popped it into her mouth, smiling at the fruity flavor.
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The colorful jelly eggs were the first to disappear from the candy dish.
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She bought a jelly egg at the store.
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These jelly eggs are my favorite candy.
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My grandmother fills a basket with jelly eggs every Easter for the grandchildren.
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She selected a red jelly egg and popped it into her mouth, smiling at the fruity flavor.
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The colorful jelly eggs were the first to disappear from the candy dish.
Synonyms
863
1.0
A small sweet made from sugar, often with chocolate or nuts
20
1.0
A decorated or chocolate egg given at Easter
1
1.0
A small sweet shaped like an egg often given at Easter
How Gelatinous
32
1.0
- UK
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning 'a small egg-shaped piece of jellied candy' is directly and transparently derived from combining 'jelly' (a gelatin-based sweet) with 'egg' (an oval object/shape), so the compound names the material/form of the confection. This compositional pattern (substance/texture + shape/object) is common and cross-linguistically familiar, so a B1 learner who knows both constituents would very likely infer the meaning.
Etymology
Jelly egg comes from a simple picture: a sweet made of soft jelly shaped like a small egg and covered in sugar. Because these candies look like tiny eggs and are often eaten at Easter, the name came to mean 'a small, egg-shaped jellied candy'.