spotted dick
1
9.1
- noun
- /ˈspɒtɪd dɪk/
- UK
:
pudín de sebo
- The spotted dick is a traditional British dessert made with suet and dried fruit.
You know, you go there, have a have a spotted Dick and drink a pint.
- You know, you go there, have a have a spotted Dick and drink a pint.
Examples
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It's used for steak and kidney pudding pastry and spotted dick (don't ask).
Blog text (9) -
Many families in the UK enjoy spotted dick as a comforting treat during winter.
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So today we're gonna put spotted Dick in your mouth.
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Not after that spotted dick you served last week, eh?
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The spotted dick is a dessert.
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Here we have roast beef and Yorkshire pudding... ...bangers and mash and the ever-popular spotted dick.
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For dessert, we enjoyed a warm serving of spotted dick topped with custard.
Synonyms
1
7.6
A steamed or boiled pudding made from suet, a hard beef fat, and flour, often sweet
Surface Forms
Morphology
spotted + dick
The phrase is a conventional British food name where 'spotted' (having spots) could hint at the currants, but 'dick' is not transparently understood as 'pudding' by learners and has unrelated slang senses in many varieties of English. Because the overall meaning (a steamed suet pudding with dried fruit) cannot be derived from the literal meanings of the parts and is culturally specific, a B1 learner who only knows the constituents would not reliably infer it.
Etymology
Spotted dick probably comes from how the dessert looks: the steamed cake is full of dark dried fruit that make little 'spots', so the word spotted fits, and dick was once an old name for a simple 'pudding' or dough. So the name came to mean the traditional British steamed 'pudding' we know today.