Madras
name, noun ·Uncommon ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 A style of curry dish purported to originate from the Madras region. British, countable, uncountable
"I’ll have the chicken Madras."
- 2 A brightly colored cotton fabric with a checked or striped pattern. countable, uncountable
"A black woman in blue cotton gown, red-and-yellow Madras turban […] crouched against the wall."
- 3 a light patterned cotton cloth wordnet
- 4 A large handkerchief of this fabric, worn on the head in the West Indies. countable, uncountable
- 5 Alternative form of Madras (“type of curry”). alt-of, alternative, countable, uncountable
"Gerry ordered poppadoms and parathas and then he was interrupted by requests for vindaloos, chicken madrases and sag joshes, rice, raita and nan, from Priest, Morgan and Maria Grazia."
- 1 Former name of Chennai: the capital and largest city of Tamil Nadu, India.
- 2 A city, the county seat of Jefferson County, Oregon, United States.
Example
More examples"He started getting serious about a career in mathematics during his undergraduate years at Madras University. It was in Calcutta, India, where he'd gone to get his PhD in applied statistics, that Varadhan says the urgings of his peers helped steer him from the applied side to the theoretical side of probability."
Etymology
The etymology is uncertain; it may derive from Madraspattinam. See Wikipedia for several possible etymologies.
From Madras, former name of the Indian city Chennai, where it was first produced.
Related phrases
More for "madras"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.