Bouillabaisse
noun ·Moderate ·College level
Definitions
- 1 A type of fish soup or stew from Provence, France. countable, uncountable
"And here's an inn, not rich and splendid, / But still in comfortable case; / The which in youth I oft attended, / To eat a bowl of Bouillabaisse. // This Bouillabaisse a noble dish is— / A sort of soup, or broth, or brew, / Or hotchpotch of all sorts of fishes, / That Greenwich never could outdo; / Green herbs, red peppers, mussels, saffern, / Soles, onions, garlic, roach, and dace; / All these you eat at Terré's tavern, / In that one dish of Bouillabaisse."
- 2 highly seasoned Mediterranean soup or stew made of several kinds of fish and shellfish with tomatoes and onions or leeks and seasoned with saffron and garlic and herbs wordnet
- 3 A mixture. countable, figuratively, uncountable
"La Sirène du Mississipi is a synthesis of the work he [François Truffaut] has been doing during the preceding six or eight years, a great bouillabaisse of [Jean] Renoir, [Alfred] Hitchcock, [Humphrey] Bogart, [Antoine] Doinel, [...]"
Example
More examples"In Quezon City, my family enjoyed a favourite place where there were two restaurants, Italian Village and Monk's Inn, both medievally decorated. In the latter, I had my first taste of French onion soup and bouillabaisse. In the former, I enjoyed lasagna."
Etymology
Borrowed from French bouillabaisse, from Occitan bolhabaissa, bouiabaisso, possibly a compound of bolhir (“to boil”) + abaissar (“to lower (the temperature)”).
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.