beluga caviar
3
8.9
- noun
- /bɪˈluːɡə ˈkæviˌɑr/
:
caviar de beluga
- This evening, we're serving beluga caviar with toasted brioche.
- beluga caviar with champagne
- beluga caviar by the ounce
Examples
-
This evening, we're serving beluga caviar with toasted brioche.
-
Can I get a bottle of chilled Bollinger Grand Annee and the beluga caviar? - With everything? - Yes, with everything.
-
We feature beluga caviar, succulent oysters, and champagne.
-
At the encouragement of the B-girls, targets invariably bought bottles of expensive champagne, rounds of excessively priced drinks, and heaps of fine Beluga caviar.
Academic text (2018) -
Have you ever had the beluga caviar at the Ritz-Carlton?
-
California fish farmers are starting to raise the coveted beluga caviar.
Synonyms
91
7.2
Salted eggs from large fish that people eat as a special expensive food
1
9.5
Salted fish eggs from large fish served as a luxury food
How Expensive
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning is directly compositional: 'beluga' names a specific sturgeon and 'caviar' means fish roe, so 'beluga caviar' denotes the roe from the beluga sturgeon. This species+product pattern is straightforward and cross-linguistically common, so a B1 learner who knows both constituents can infer the MWE's meaning even if the item is culturally specific.
Etymology
Beluga caviar gets its name from the big fish called the beluga sturgeon and from caviar, which means fish eggs. The sturgeon makes large, shiny eggs that look like pearls, and people long ago valued them as an expensive, special food, so today the phrase means a very high-quality, 'luxury' food.