Word.ws English Dictionary

hors d'oeuvre

/ˌɔːˈdɜːv//ˌɔɹˈdɝv/

hors d'oeuvre noun: a small, light, and usually savory first course in a meal.

Noun

hors d'oeuvre (plural hors d'oeuvre or hors d'oeuvres)

  1. A small, light, and usually savory first course in a meal.
  2. (broadly) Anything preliminary and of secondary concern.
    • His price was five hundred pounds in English or French gold—an interesting phase of your ordinary blackmailer's antipathy to paper—merely an hors d'oeuvre to the solid things to come, of course.1923, Ernest Bramah [pseudonym; Ernest Brammah Smith], “(please specify the page)”, in The Eyes of Max Carrados, London: Grant Richards, →OCLC
  3. (dated, rare) Something unusual or extraordinary.

hors d'oeuvre meaning in Tagalog and Thai

hors d'oeuvre in Tagalog

appetizer
pampagana

hors d'oeuvre in Thai

appetizer
ออเดิร์ฟ ɔɔ-də́əp

Synonyms of hors d'oeuvre

All synonyms of hors d'oeuvre

Forms of hors d'oeuvre

pluralhors d'oeuvre
pluralhors d'oeuvres
alternative formhors-d'oeuvre
alternative formhors d'œuvre
alternative formhors-d'œuvre

Origin of hors d'oeuvre

Borrowed from French hors-d'œuvre.

Questions about hors d'oeuvre

What does hors d'oeuvre mean?
Hors d'oeuvre means a small, light, and usually savory first course in a meal.
What is hors d'oeuvre in Tagalog?
Hors d'oeuvre in Tagalog is pampagana. See Hors d'oeuvre meaning in Tagalog.
What part of speech is hors d'oeuvre?
Hors d'oeuvre is a noun.
How do you pronounce hors d'oeuvre?
Hors d'oeuvre is pronounced /ˌɔːˈdɜːv/ (UK).
What is the plural of hors d'oeuvre?
The plural of hors d'oeuvre is hors d'oeuvre.

Words near hors d'oeuvre in the dictionary

  1. Horry County
  2. hors categorie
  3. hors categories
  4. hors catégorie
  5. hors catégories
  6. hors d'oeuvre
  7. hors d'oeuvres
  8. hors d'œuvre
  9. hors de combat
  10. hors-catégorie
  11. hors-d'oeuvre

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: hors d'oeuvre (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: en-uk-hors d'oeuvre.ogg, en-us-hors d'oeuvre.ogg.

Cite this entry: “hors d'oeuvre.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/hors_d%27oeuvre. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.