boil
Language: English
Part of speech: noun
Pronunciation: ipa: /bɔɪl/
ipa: /ˈbɔɪ.əl/
rhymes: -ɔɪl
Forms: form: boils
form: boyl
form: boyle
Etymology: From Middle English boillen, from Old French boillir (see French bouillir) from Latin bullīre (“to bubble, boil”), from bulla (“bubble”). Displaced native Old English weallan (intransitive) and wiellan (transitive). More at wall, well.
Senses: examples: text: Add the noodles when the water comes to the boil.
glosses: The point at which fluid begins to change to a vapour; the boiling point.
examples: text: Surface water will do, but give it a good boil before drinking it.
glosses: An instance of boiling.
examples: text: a down-home boil with plenty of crab
text: This is Brad's classic shrimp boil—a recipe he makes for every tailgate party. Brad demands, “Don't use utensils!” INGREDIENTS: Two 6-ounce boxes Old Bay crab/shrimp boil seasoning[…]
ref: 2007 January 30, Angela Skinner, Race Day Grub: Recipes from the NASCAR Family, John Wiley & Sons, →ISBN, page 65:
text: CRAWFISH BOIL EN GELÉE (TERRINE OF CRAWFISH) […] For a typical Louisiana shrimp boil, use the recipe for Crawfish Boil (page 28), substituting shrimp for the crawfish […]
ref: 2009 September 29, John Besh, My New Orleans: The Cookbook, Andrews McMeel Publishing, →ISBN, pages 28, 30, 123:
glosses: A dish of boiled food, especially seafood.
examples: text: a down-home boil at the town hall
text: Men and boys also learn to cook at the public and semipublic food events at which men are the primary cooks. These include crawfish and seafood boils, family boucheries, and community festivals. For example, at one crab boil I attended, a grandfather and his eight-year-old grandson cooked the second batch of crabs […]. The advent of crawfish farming has expanded the availability of live crawfish beyond the old seasonal limits just described, but few Cajuns in St. Martin Parish have crawfish boils, or eat crawfish in any form, out of season.
ref: 1992, C. Paige Gutierrez, Cajun Foodways, Univ. Press of Mississippi, →ISBN, page 89:
text: The whole live crawfish typically are consumed at home and at crawfish boils and other social events where the crawfish is boiled[…]
ref: 1996, United States International Trade Commission, Crawfish Tail Meat from China, page 5:
text: I met him and his wife, Diane, at a shrimp boil I'd been invited to by another ex-trawler named Lindel.
ref: 2012 November 20, Jill Ann Harrison, Buoyancy on the Bayou: Shrimpers Face the Rising Tide of Globalization, Cornell University Press, →ISBN, page 89:
text: I also felt the desire to be in a more intimate, familiar setting where we could choose whether or not to talk about our memories of 2005; I ended up spending the evening at a shrimp boil hosted by good friends.
ref: 2018 June 4, Kate Parker Horigan, Consuming Katrina: Public Disaster and Personal Narrative, Univ. Press of Mississippi, →ISBN, page 109:
text: When Mondale had run for president two summers before, for some reason he opened his campaign in Beaufort, at a shrimp boil in our new waterfront park.
ref: 2020 February 17, Harriet Keyserling, Against the Tide: One Woman's Political Struggle, Univ of South Carolina Press, →ISBN, page 155:
glosses: A social event at which people gather to boil and eat food, especially seafood. (Compare a bake or clambake.)
glosses: The collective noun for a group of hawks.
examples: text: He swam to the place where Mary disappeared but there was neither boil nor gurgle on the water, nor even a bell of departing breath, to mark the place where his beloved had sunk.
ref: 1828, James Hogg, Mary Burnet:
text: The sea round them clouded and darkened, and then frizzed up in showers of tiny silver fish, and over a space of five or six acres the cod began to leap like trout in May; while behind the cod three or four broad gray-backs broke the water into boils.
ref: 1897, Rudyard Kipling, Captains Courageous:
glosses: A bubbling.
Derived terms: sense: Terms derived from boil (noun)
word: Beaufort boil
sense: Terms derived from boil (noun)
word: boil order
sense: Terms derived from boil (noun)
word: bring to a boil
sense: Terms derived from boil (noun)
word: come to a boil
sense: Terms derived from boil (noun)
word: crab boil
sense: Terms derived from boil (noun)
word: fish boil
sense: Terms derived from boil (noun)
word: go off the boil
sense: Terms derived from boil (noun)
word: low country boil
sense: Terms derived from boil (noun)
word: off the boil
sense: Terms derived from boil (noun)
word: on the boil
sense: Terms derived from boil (noun)
word: rolling boil
topics: geology
geography
natural-sciences
sense: Terms derived from boil (noun)
word: sand boil
sense: Terms derived from boil (noun)
word: seafood boil
sense: Terms derived from boil (noun)
word: tar boil
Related terms: boiled dinner