Word of the Day

: January 25, 2011

lobscouse

noun LAHB-skouss

What It Means

: a sailor's dish of stewed or baked meat with vegetables and hardtack

lobscouse in Context

Tucked away in a box in the attic were old recipes from Grandpa's father, including one for lobscouse.

"Mam knows that I don’t like lobscouse. All those bits of grey meat and white bone and potato and carrot in watery stock with globules of grease floating on top. It reminds me of washing-up water and I can’t eat any of it." -- From Mari Strachan's 2009 novel, The Earth Hums in B Flat

Did You Know?

The description of "lobscouse" in our second example sounds anything but appetizing, but some version of this dish has been around for at least 300 years and it is a specialty of Liverpool, England. ("Lobscouse" is also called "scouse," and Liverpudlians are sometimes referred to as "Scousers.") The origin of "lobscouse" is not known for certain. Although it's been suggested that the first syllable of the word comes from an English dialect word "lob" meaning "to boil," the more popular theory is that "lobscouse" comes from a Norwegian stew called "Lapskaus."