cochon de lait
- noun
- /koʊˈʃɒn də leɪ/
- Jargon
:
cochinillo
- For special occasions, they often roast a cochon de lait over an open fire.
Examples
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The restaurant's signature dish is a slow-roasted cochon de lait served with seasonal vegetables.
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The chef prepared a delicious cochon de lait for the feast.
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The chef prepared a traditional Cuban cochon de lait for the holiday feast.
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Have you ever tasted a cochon de lait at a festival?
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We celebrated the feast with a delicious roast cochon de lait served alongside fresh vegetables.
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At the festival, the highlight of the menu was the succulent cochon de lait slow-roasted to perfection.
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During our family gathering, we enjoyed a tender cochon de lait that had been marinated overnight.
Synonyms
62
1.0
A very young farm animal with a round body and short legs that still drinks its mother's milk
3
6.6
A very young pig that still drinks its mother's milk, often cooked whole for roasting
1
2.1
A very small pig people often call in a cute way
A young pig
A young pig that no longer drinks its mother's milk
How Filling
Surface Forms
Morphology
cochon + de + lait
The phrase literally composes cochon (pig) + de (of) + lait (milk) to mean a milk‑fed pig, which directly corresponds to a young piglet prepared for roasting. This transparent, descriptive construction is cross‑linguistically common (cf. Spanish lechón), so a learner who knows the constituents should be able to infer the MWE meaning.
Etymology
Cochon de lait literally means 'milk pig'; cochon is pig and lait is milk. It refers to very young piglets still drinking their mother's milk, and because these tender, milk-fed piglets were often roasted whole for special meals, the phrase now means a whole young pig prepared for roasting.