clover-leaf roll
- noun
- /ˈkloʊvər liːf roʊl/
- US
:
panecillo en forma de trébol
- She served hot clover-leaf rolls with butter at Thanksgiving dinner.
Examples
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The clover-leaf roll is easy to pull apart because of its three sections.
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The bakery sells fresh clover-leaf rolls every morning.
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Bakers often brush a clover-leaf roll with melted butter before baking for a golden crust.
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I baked a delicious clover-leaf roll for dinner.
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She served hot clover-leaf rolls with butter at Thanksgiving dinner.
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The clover-leaf roll is easy to pull apart because of its three sections.
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The bakery sells fresh clover-leaf rolls every morning.
Surface Forms
Morphology
clover-leaf + roll
The compound is compositionally transparent: 'clover-leaf' conveys a clover-shaped form (derivable from 'clover' + 'leaf') and 'roll' denotes a small bread, so the phrase describes a roll shaped like a clover leaf. Even if 'clover-leaf' as a single lexical item is rare, the shape-descriptive pattern is straightforward and cross-linguistically common, so a B1 learner who knows the constituents would likely infer the meaning.
Etymology
Clover-leaf roll comes from the way it is made: bakers put three small balls of dough together so the baked roll looks like a three-leaf clover. That's why the name clover-leaf roll means a small roll with 'three parts' and why it is 'easy to pull apart'.
