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Glite Dictionary
porcupines

porcupines

9.9
Meatballs made with beef and rice cooked in tomato sauce
  • noun
  • /ˈpɔrkjəˌpaɪnz/
  • US
translation icon : bolas de carne

Examples

  • Why, I'll never forget the day I gave him a copy of How Porcupines Make Love.

    Fiction book (2001)

  • Alexie, Robert Arthur. Porcupines and China Dolls. Toronto: Stoddart, 2002. Print.

    Academic text (2013)

  • Ruby Slipperjacks, Silent Words, and Alexie's Porcupines and China Dolls similarly hinge on a death in the family.

    Academic text (2014)

  • Henighan, Stephen. When Words Deny the World: The Reshaping of Canadian Writing. Erin: Porcupines Quill, 2002. Print.

    Academic text (2013)

  • Porcupines (Backyard Animals Series). Christine Webster. Weigl Educational Publishers. 978-1-60596-078-4.

    Academic text (2011)

  • I asked for, and got, Porcupines by Echo & the Bunnymen and Gustav Mahler's "Resurrection" symphony, both of which first appeared in my life about 1983; the first via Radio 1, the second thanks to Stephen Sharkey, who had heard it on the radio and was never the same again.

    Blog text (31)

  • For dinner, we made porcupines with meatballs of beef and rice simmered in a delicious tomato sauce.

  • My grandmother's recipe for porcupines always brings back fond memories of family gatherings.

  • The chef prepared a special dish of porcupines that everyone at the party loved and asked for seconds.

Synonyms

meatball
vsporcupines
103 1.0

A small ball of ground meat that is mixed with other ingredients and cooked

typically lack rice and are not rolled or mixed with rice
porcupine ball
vsporcupines
  • Archaic
8.8

A small ball of meat rolled in rice and cooked in tomato sauce

has rice mixed into the meat rather than rolled on the outside

Surface Forms

porcupines plural
porcupine singular

Morphology

porcupines = porcupine (semi-transparent) = porcupine + s

The plural form is regular, but the sense 'meatballs called porcupines' is a metaphorical dish name derived from the animal, so the relation is clear but not strictly literal.

Etymology

Porcupines comes from the animal porcupine because the rice in the meatballs sticks out like the animal's quills. So the name helps you remember that these meatballs have rice grains sticking out like little spikes.