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Glite Dictionary
tapioca pudding

tapioca pudding

2 2.7
A sweet creamy dessert with small soft balls of tapioca cooked in milk and sugar
  • noun
  • /ˌtæpiˈoʊkə ˈpʊdɪŋ/
translation icon : pudín de tapioca
  • She often makes tapioca pudding for family gatherings because everyone loves its sweet taste.
  • tapioca pudding for dessert
  • coconut tapioca pudding

Examples

  • For dessert, we enjoyed a smooth, creamy tapioca pudding flavored with vanilla.

  • I make a very good fluffy tapioca pudding.

    Blog text (28)

  • There, there, my little tapioca pudding.

    Paradise Hills (2019)

  • 'Course, we have tapioca pudding for dessert.

    Rain Man (1988)

  • Well some people don't like tapioca pudding.

    The House Across the Bay (1940)

  • -You got tapioca pudding?

    Rain Man (1988)

  • Great skit, high schoolers just stepped up to paid professionals and served them a plate of low-cal tapioca pudding.

    Blog text (32)

  • And tapioca pudding for dessert, as well as the Smithsonian special salad with—you'll find it under the napkin—the recipe for the special dressing, which you can make right here in bed...

    Fiction book (1998)

  • The restaurant's special dessert was a delightful tapioca pudding served with fresh berries.

Surface Forms

tapioca pudding singular
tapioca puddings plural

Morphology

tapioca + pudding

The noun compound is transparently compositional: it denotes a pudding made from tapioca, so a learner who knows 'tapioca' (a cassava-derived thickener) and 'pudding' (a soft sweet dessert) can infer the meaning. The pattern 'X pudding' regularly indicates a dessert made with X in English and is paralleled in other languages, supporting immediate comprehension.

Etymology

Tapioca pudding is named for its main parts: tapioca are small starchy 'pearls' and pudding means a soft, milky 'dessert'. So the name gives a clear picture of a creamy sweet with little pearls in it.