General Tso's chicken
General Tso's chicken noun: a sweet and spicy dish of deep-fried chicken, popular in Chinese restaurants in North America.
Noun
General Tso's chicken (uncountable)
- A sweet and spicy dish of deep-fried chicken, popular in Chinese restaurants in North America.
- Hot and sour soup, shrimp toast, shumai, General Tso’s chicken, pork with garlic sauce, beef with asparagus, hot and spicy shrimp, sushi deluxe, cheesecake, fried bananas, litchi sherbet.2009 May 31, Joanne Starkey, “Old-School Chinese With Efforts at Fusion”, in New York Times
- Synonyms:
- General's chicken, General Tao chicken
Synonyms of General Tso's chicken
Forms of General Tso's chicken
| alternative form | General Tso's |
|---|---|
| alternative form | General Tso |
| alternative form | General Tso chicken |
Origin of General Tso's chicken
Named after Chinese general and statesman Tso Tsung-tang (Zuǒ Zōngtáng in pinyin) in late Qing dynasty, though there is no evidence connecting him with the dish. A deeper discussion of the timeframe and possible motivations behind the naming is given in the Wikipedia article.
Questions about General Tso's chicken
- What does General Tso's chicken mean?
- General Tso's chicken means a sweet and spicy dish of deep-fried chicken, popular in Chinese restaurants in North America.
- What part of speech is General Tso's chicken?
- General Tso's chicken is a noun.
Words near General Tso's chicken in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: General Tso's chicken (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.
Last updated:
Cite this entry: “General Tso's chicken.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/general_tso%27s_chicken. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.