piccalilli
piccalilli noun: a yellow pickle relish made from cauliflower, vegetable marrow, and other vegetables, pickled with vinegar, salt, sugar, and spiced with mustard, turmeric, and other spices.
Noun
piccalilli (plural piccalillis)
- A yellow pickle relish made from cauliflower, vegetable marrow, and other vegetables, pickled with vinegar, salt, sugar, and spiced with mustard, turmeric, and other spices.
- There are, however, exceptions. Piccalilli – aka “mustard with other stuff”, aka “that noble Anglo-Indian spiritual creation” – is great with ham, he conceeds^([sic]).2020 April 9, Sam Jones, “Spanish writer spills beans on UK's saucy secrets”, in The Guardian, →ISSN
- Synonyms:
- chowchow, India relish
- A pickle, typically on a base of chopped green (unripe) tomatoes, but sometimes finely-chopped pickles, and possibly including other vegetables.
- Synonyms:
- relish
Synonyms of piccalilli
Forms of piccalilli
| plural | piccalillis |
|---|---|
| alternative form | picalilli |
Origin of piccalilli
Unknown. First use appears c. 1758. Presumably a variant of pickle, which itself is from Middle English pekille (“spicy sauce served with meat or fish”) or pikel, from Middle Dutch pekel (“brine”); perhaps influenced by dialectal variants. Alternatively, it may be related to paco lilla (“ginger-spiced pickle”), from the 18th century British cookbook The Art of Cookery (1747–1843; e.g., 1805 edition) by Hannah Glasse (1708–1770), also referred to as Indian pickles, which suggests an Indo-Aryan source; compare mulligatawny, of Tamil origin, which also features turmeric prominently, and curry, of Tamil or Middle English origin (or a blend). Not etymologically related to Piccadilly.
Words that rhyme with piccalilli
Questions about piccalilli
- What does piccalilli mean?
- Piccalilli means a yellow pickle relish made from cauliflower, vegetable marrow, and other vegetables, pickled with vinegar, salt, sugar, and spiced with mustard, turmeric, and other spices.
- What part of speech is piccalilli?
- Piccalilli is a noun.
- What is the plural of piccalilli?
- The plural of piccalilli is piccalillis.
Words near piccalilli in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: piccalilli (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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Cite this entry: “piccalilli.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/piccalilli. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.