Word.ws English Dictionary

jello

/ˈd͡ʒɛləʊ/US/ˈd͡ʒɛloʊ/

jello noun: a dessert made by boiling gelatine, sugar and some flavoring (often derived from fruit) and allowing it to set.

jello: a dessert made by boiling gelatine, sugar and some flavoring (often derived from fruit) and...
Image: Photographer not credited, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun (1)

jello (usually uncountable, plural jellos)

  1. (Canada, US, usually) A dessert made by boiling gelatine, sugar and some flavoring (often derived from fruit) and allowing it to set.
    • The jello was gone in five minutes and the cigarette smoked.1940, Carson McCullers, The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, Houghton Mifflin, published 2004, →ISBN, page 306
    • Distribution of cherry jello was stepped up to college campus towns across America.2002, Rich Zubaty, Your Brain Is Not Your Own, →ISBN, page 159
    Synonyms:
    jelly

Noun (2) capitalized: Jello

Jello (uncountable)

  1. A dessert made by boiling gelatin in water.
    • And the food! I mean, I'm not fussy, but couldn't they think of anything better than this toothpaste? A little Jello or something, a nice can of soup.1968, Ronald Sukenick, Up, published 1998, →ISBN, page 26
    • Alex Portnoy thought his mother had magical powers because she could suspend fruit in mid-Jello.1977, Florence King, WASP, Where is Thy Sting?, excerpt, in The Florence King Reader, 1996 St. Martin's Press ed., →ISBN, page 25

Synonyms of jello

Forms of jello

pluraljellos
alternative formJell-O
alternative formJello
alternative formjello

Origin of jello

Genericized trademark of the brand name Jell-O.

From the brand name Jell-O.

Words formed from jello

Phrases with jello

Words that rhyme with jello

10 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about jello

What does jello mean?
Jello means a dessert made by boiling gelatine, sugar and some flavoring (often derived from fruit) and allowing it to set.
What part of speech is jello?
Jello is a noun.
How do you pronounce jello?
Jello is pronounced /ˈd͡ʒɛloʊ/ (US).
What is the plural of jello?
The plural of jello is jellos.

Words near jello in the dictionary

  1. Jellis
  2. Jellison
  3. Jellisons
  4. jellium
  5. jelliums
  6. jello
  7. jello salad
  8. jello salads
  9. jello shooter
  10. jello shooters
  11. jelloid

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: jello (page history and authors); Jello (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)-Vealhurl-jello.wav.

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