Word.ws English Dictionary

tamal

tamal is the alternative form of tamale.

Meaning of tamale

Noun

tamale (plural tamales)

  1. A Mexican dish of cornmeal dough shell filled with various ingredients (e.g. chopped beef, pork, sweet filling) then steamed in corn husks.
    • She would peel back the husk, ladle over the salsa verde, stab a plastic fork straight down into the heart of the masa, and hand the tamale over to me.2023, Justin Torres, Blackouts, Granta Books (2024), pages 70-71
    Synonyms:
    humita, tamal

See all 2 meanings of tamale

Synonyms of tamal

Forms of tamal

pluraltamales
plural proscribedtamals

Origin of tamal

From Spanish tamal, from Nahuatl tamalli (“wrapped”).

Questions about tamal

What is tamal the alternative form of?
Tamal is the alternative form of tamale.

Words near tamal in the dictionary

  1. Tamajaq
  2. Tamak
  3. tamakeri
  4. Tamaki
  5. Tamakis
  6. tamal
  7. tamalada
  8. tamaladas
  9. tamale
  10. tamale pie
  11. tamale pies

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: tamal (page history and authors); tamale (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: “tamal.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/tamal. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.