Word of the Day

: March 7, 2011

collop

noun KAH-lup

What It Means

1 : a small piece or slice especially of meat

2 : a fold of fat flesh

collop in Context

"I kept my eyes fixed on my dish. It was a fast day, and I could not imagine how to swallow the collop of tench that lay there…." -- From Emma Darwin's 2008 novel A Secret Alchemy

"You put the collops of meat in a pan with wine, marjoram, shallots and bacon." -- From an article by Bee Wilson in The Sunday Telegraph (London), July 11, 2010

Did You Know?

The word "collop" is fat with meaning. It originated as a Middle-English word for an egg fried on bacon and later for the slice of bacon itself. In 18th-century Great Britain, it began designating the Monday before Shrove Tuesday. Traditionally, on "Collop Monday" fried bacon and eggs were eaten. The word was also extended to refer to any slice of meat, as in "collops of lobster," and to a fold of flesh on the body. In addition, the word can be used figuratively to refer to any piece of something -- for example, in Sir Walter Scott's novel Waverley we find "a 'collop of the foray,' or, in plainer words, a portion of the robber's booty."