Word.ws English Dictionary

tamale

Syllables: ta·ma·le/təˈmɑː.liː/US/təˈmɑ.li/

tamale noun: a Mexican dish of cornmeal dough shell filled with various ingredients (e.g. chopped beef, pork, sweet filling) then steamed in corn husks.

tamale: a Mexican dish of cornmeal dough shell filled with various ingredients (e.g. chopped beef, pork,...
Image: Renee Comet (photographer), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

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

Proper noun capitalized: Tamale

Tamale

  1. A city in Ghana, the capital city of the Northern Region.

tamale meaning in Tagalog

tamale in Tagalog

Mexican dish
tamales

Examples of tamale in a sentence

  • Boy oh boy it’s cold today, hot tamale!
  • He' so funny; what a hot tamale he is!
  • Some longtime Texas tamaleros told the American-Statesman that good tamales easily slide right off the husk.

All 20 example sentences with tamale

Synonyms of tamale

Forms of tamale

pluraltamales

Origin of tamale

Back-formation from the plural tamales, derived from Latin American Spanish tamales, plural of tamal, derived from Nahuatl tamalli (“wrapped”), derived from Proto-Uto-Aztecan *tïmaL-. Compare O'odham cemait (“tortilla”), Hopi tuma (“stone griddle for cooking corn flatbread”), Ute tʉ'ma- (“to roast under ashes”).

Words formed from tamale

Phrases with tamale

Words that rhyme with tamale

2 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about tamale

What does tamale mean?
Tamale means a Mexican dish of cornmeal dough shell filled with various ingredients (e.g. chopped beef, pork, sweet filling) then steamed in corn husks.
What is tamale in Tagalog?
Tamale in Tagalog is tamales. See Tamale meaning in Tagalog.
What part of speech is tamale?
Tamale can be a noun or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce tamale?
Tamale is pronounced /təˈmɑː.liː/ (UK).
What is the plural of tamale?
The plural of tamale is tamales.

Words near tamale in the dictionary

  1. Tamaki
  2. Tamakis
  3. tamal
  4. tamalada
  5. tamaladas
  6. tamale
  7. tamale pie
  8. tamale pies
  9. tamalera
  10. tamaleras
  11. tamalero

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: tamale (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.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-tamale.wav.

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