stirabout
1
9.9
- noun
- Archaic
- The children enjoyed their stirabout topped with honey and berries.
Examples
-
Mary Cougan served stirabout from a witch's pot and strong tea from tannin-colored crockery.
Fiction book (1995) -
Forcing Eva to eat the stirabout.
-
May you unflinchingly go on stirabouts throughout your days.
Academic text (2005) -
For breakfast, she prepared a steaming bowl of stirabout made with fresh oatmeal.
-
After stirring the cornmeal into boiling milk, he served the thick stirabout to his family.
Synonyms
97
1.0
Soft cooked oats eaten for breakfast
36
3.6
A soft thick porridge made from cornmeal
26
1.0
Soft warm food made by boiling oats in milk or water until thick
1
4.0
A thick hot porridge made by boiling cornmeal in water
1
8.0
A hot sweet porridge you make by boiling cornmeal or oats with milk and usually eat with syrup
How Thick
Surface Forms
Morphology
stirabout = stir (semi-transparent) = about + stir
The components 'stir' + 'about' are clear and suggest something stirred, but the conventionalized dialectal meaning 'porridge' is a specialized lexicalization not directly predictable by the parts. [Postprocessing: moved 'about' from base_words to prefix]
Etymology
The word stirabout comes from the action of stir + about, meaning 'to move around' or 'mix', because you stir the oats 'about' in the pot. So, a stirabout is a porridge made by stirring, which makes it easy to remember as a warm, thick breakfast dish.