Word.ws English Dictionary

Jell-O

UK/ˈdʒɛləʊ//ˈdʒɛloʊ/

Jell-O proper noun: a brand of dessert made from gelatin.

Proper noun

Jell-O

  1. (Canada, US) A brand of dessert made from gelatin.
    • For quotations using this term, see Citations:Jell-O.
  2. (broadly, genericized trademark) Any brand of fruit flavored gelatin dessert mix.
    • The store brand Jell-O is just as good and one third the price.
    • For quotations using this term, see Citations:Jell-O.
    Synonyms:
    jelly

Synonyms of Jell-O

Forms of Jell-O

alternative formjello
alternative formJello
alternative formJell-o
alternative formJELL-O

Origin of Jell-O

Trademarked by Pearle Bixby Wait and named by his wife, May Wait. Clipping of gelatin and jelly, both ultimately from Latin gelō (“to freeze, cause to congeal”), following a then relatively popular trend in the United States to add “O” to the end of products, which according to The Dictionary of Trade Names Origins started because the letter is pleasing to the eye. By surface analysis, jell (“jelly”) + -o.

Words formed from Jell-O

Phrases with Jell-O

Words that rhyme with Jell-O

10 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about Jell-O

What does Jell-O mean?
Jell-O means a brand of dessert made from gelatin.
What part of speech is Jell-O?
Jell-O is a proper noun.
How do you pronounce Jell-O?
Jell-O is pronounced /ˈdʒɛloʊ/ (US).

Words near Jell-O in the dictionary

  1. jelked
  2. jelking
  3. jelks
  4. jell
  5. jell out
  6. Jell-O
  7. Jell-O shot
  8. Jell-O shots
  9. jellaba
  10. jellabah
  11. jellabahs

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Jell-O (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:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-Jell-O.wav.

Cite this entry: “Jell-O.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/jell-o. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.