Jell-o

//ˈdʒɛloʊ// name

name ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    fruit-flavored dessert (trade mark Jell-O) made from a commercially prepared gelatin powder wordnet
Proper Noun
  1. 1
    A brand of dessert made from gelatin. Canada, US

    "For quotations using this term, see Citations:Jell-O."

  2. 2
    Any brand of fruit flavored gelatin dessert mix. broadly

    "The store brand Jell-O is just as good and one third the price."

Synonyms

All synonyms
candycomfitconfectionconfectioneryconservefrosting

Example

More examples

"When this crab gets injured, gets a little cut on its body, bacteria can get into it from the water, so the Horseshoe crab blood actually Jell-O’s around those bacteria and stops them from getting into the Horseshoe crab body."

Etymology

Trademarked by Pearle Bixby Wait and named by his wife, May Wait. Clipping of gelatin and jelly, both ultimately from Latin gelō (“to freeze, cause to congeal”), following a then relatively popular trend in the United States to add “O” to the end of products, which according to The Dictionary of Trade Names Origins started because the letter is pleasing to the eye. By surface analysis, jell (“jelly”) + -o.

Related phrases

Jell-O shotnail Jell-O to a tree

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.