bouillabaisse
Syllables: bouil·la·baisse/ˈbuːjəˌbeɪs//ˈbujəˌbeɪs/
bouillabaisse noun: a type of fish soup or stew from Provence, France.
Noun
bouillabaisse (countable and uncountable, plural bouillabaisses)
- A type of fish soup or stew from Provence, France.
- 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; /...1849, [William Makepeace Thackeray], “The Ballad of Bouillabaisse”, in Punch, or The London Charivari, volume XVI, London: Published at the office, 85, Fleet Street, →OCLC, page 67, column 1
- First of all they dined together at a delightful little Franco-Italian pothouse near Leicester Square, where they had bouillabaisse (imagine the Laird's delight), and spaghetti, and a poulet rôti, which is such a different affair from a roast fowl!1894, George du Maurier, “Part Fifth: Little Billee: An Interlude”, in Trilby: A Novel, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers, →OCLC, page 243
- A chaotic, disorganized mixture; a confused hodgepodge.
- 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, [...]1976, James Monaco, The New Wave: Truffaut, Godard, Chabrol, Rohmer, Rivette, New York, N.Y.: Oxford University Press, →ISBN, page 68
- Social psychologists differentiated between "merely desegregated" and "genuinely integrated" schools [...]. The former refers to a mere racial bouillabaisse and implies nothing about the quality of racial interaction that is a precondition to effective learning.1984, Wallace D[zu] Loh, “Implementation and Expansion of Law: Case Study of Southern and Northern School Desegregation”, in Social Research in the Judicial Process: Cases, Readings, and Text, New...
- Synonyms:
- bric-a-brac, catch-all, clamjamfrey, cocktail, rummage, salad, anthology, gallery, gatherum, congeries
Examples of bouillabaisse in a sentence
- Further to the east he could see the jetty of the Yacht Club, where one may eat to surfeit of the best bouillabaisse in the world, in some of the best company.1926 November, Perceval Gibbon, “The Tryst”, in The Strand Magazine: An Illustrated Monthly, volume LXXII, London: George Newnes, Ltd....
- A remarkable bouillabaisse is served up in the little restaurant where I take my meals, that is, lunch, for in the evening I eat only fruit, figs and grapes mostly, in my room.1942, D. Barlone, “[3 September 1940]”, in L. V. Cass, transl., A French Officer’s Diary: (23 August 1939 – 1 October 1940), 1st paperback...
- On the very bridge of the boat, exhilarated, he [Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec] concocted elaborate bouillabaisses, refining his recipes with priestly gravity.1982, Mary Tapié de Céleyran, edited by Georges Beauté, A Toulouse-Lautrec Album, Salt Lake City, Ut.: Gibbs M. Smith, →ISBN, page 62...
- I expected the open-air markets, but defrosted bouillabaisse and canned ratatouille weren’t what I imagined to be staples of Parisian culinary life.2025 November 3, Julia Belluz, “The French Secret to Eating Healthy? Prepared Food and Frozen Dinners.”, in The New York Times, New York...
Synonyms of bouillabaisse
30 more synonymsFewer synonyms
- crazyquilt
- disjecta membra
- farrago
- galimatias
- gallimaufry
- grab bag
- hodgepodge
- horse and rabbit stew
- hotchpotch
- hotchpot
- job lot
- jumble
- macedoine
- medley
- melange
- mingle-mangle
- miscellanea
- miscellany
- mishmash
- mixed bag
- mixture
- motley
- odds and ends
- oddments
- olio
- olla podrida
- omnium-gatherum
- pastiche
- patchwork quilt
- potpourri
Forms of bouillabaisse
| plural | bouillabaisses |
|---|
Origin of bouillabaisse
Borrowed from French bouillabaisse, from Occitan bolhabaissa, bouiabaisso, possibly a compound of bolhir (“to boil”) + abaissar (“to lower (the temperature)”).
Words that rhyme with bouillabaisse
45 more rhymesFewer rhymes
- embrace
- lace
- replace
- mace
- displace
- bass
- efface
- plaice
- disgrace
- pes
- abase
- debase
- deface
- interlace
- misplace
- retrace
- white space
- dace
- enlace
- grimace
- nominative case
- red in the face
- -ase
- abaisse
- acoustic bass
- aggrace
- Alsace
- apace
- artspace
- encase
- gather pace
- Harbour Grace
- Havre de Grace
- heart of grace
- into space
- Jace
- Jase
- laisse
- misgrace
- Naas
- outpace
- reys
- supplace
- Thrace
- torace
Questions about bouillabaisse
- What does bouillabaisse mean?
- Bouillabaisse means a type of fish soup or stew from Provence, France.
- How do you use bouillabaisse in a sentence?
- Further to the east he could see the jetty of the Yacht Club, where one may eat to surfeit of the best bouillabaisse in the world, in some of the best company.
- What part of speech is bouillabaisse?
- Bouillabaisse is a noun.
- How do you pronounce bouillabaisse?
- Bouillabaisse is pronounced /ˈbuːjəˌbeɪs/ (UK).
- What is the plural of bouillabaisse?
- The plural of bouillabaisse is bouillabaisses.
Words near bouillabaisse in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: bouillabaisse (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-I learned some phrases-bouillabaisse.wav, LL-Q1860 (eng)-Wodencafe-bouillabaisse.wav.
Cite this entry: “bouillabaisse.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/bouillabaisse. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.