Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun Fermented, roasted, shelled, and ground cacao seeds, often combined with a sweetener or flavoring agent.
  • noun A beverage made by mixing water or milk with chocolate.
  • noun A small, chocolate-covered candy with a hard or soft center.
  • noun A grayish to deep reddish brown to deep grayish brown.
  • adjective Made or flavored with chocolate.
  • adjective Of a grayish to deep reddish brown to deep grayish brown.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A paste or cake composed of the kernels of the Theobroma Cacao, ground and combined with sugar and vanilla, cinnamon, cloves, or other flavoring substance.
  • noun The beverage made by dissolving chocolate in boiling water or milk.
  • Having the color of chocolate; of a dark reddish-brown color: as, chocolate cloth.
  • Made of or flavored with chocolate: as, chocolate cake or ice-cream.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun A paste or cake composed of the roasted seeds of the Theobroma Cacao ground and mixed with other ingredients, usually sugar, and cinnamon or vanilla.
  • noun The beverage made by dissolving a portion of the paste or cake in boiling water or milk.
  • noun a house in which customers may be served with chocolate.
  • noun See Cacao.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun uncountable A food made from ground roasted cocoa beans
  • noun countable A single, small piece of confectionery made from chocolate
  • noun uncountable A dark, reddish-brown colour/color, like that of chocolate
  • adjective Made of or containing chocolate.
  • adjective Having a dark reddish-brown colour/color.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a medium brown to dark-brown color
  • noun a beverage made from cocoa powder and milk and sugar; usually drunk hot
  • noun a food made from roasted ground cacao beans

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Spanish, from Nahuatl chicolātl, chocolātl, frothy beverage made from water, cornmeal, and ground cacao and kapok tree seeds : probably chicol-, chocol-, of unknown meaning and origin + ātl, water.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Often said to come from Nahuatl xocolātl (e.g. American Heritage Dictionary 2000) or chocolatl (e.g. dictionary.com 2006), which would be derived from xococ ("bitter"), and ātl ("water"), (with an irregular change of x to ch). However, the form xocolatl is not directly attested, and chocolatl does not appear in Nahuatl until the mid-18th century. Dakin and Wichmann (2000) propose that the chocol- element refers to a special wooden stick used to prepare chocolate, and suggest the correct etymology to be chicolātl, a word found in several modern Nahuatl dialects.

Support

Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word chocolate.

Examples

Comments

Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.

  • The more you look at this word the more it looks like a chemical compound, no?

    December 3, 2006

  • yeah, i never saw it before though

    (prob, cuz i was high on the serotonin

    September 27, 2007

  • )

    September 27, 2007

  • According to the National Confectioners Association, there are no fewer than four National Chocolate Days: July 7, October 28, December 28, and December 29. That doesn't include American Chocolate Week (third week in March) and International Chocolate Day (September 13). Oh, and National White Chocolate Day (September 22), which I don't believe should be celebrated at all. ;-)

    November 8, 2007

  • Contains hot and cocoa.

    April 26, 2008

  • thnx reesete i put not one but all of em on my cal and i agree white choc does suck

    April 29, 2008

  • Well, if you really want to celebrate chocolate, murAM, check out the rest of the holidays. :-)

    April 29, 2008

  • Job for somebody.

    July 24, 2009

  • Milo or Nesquik?

    For me, it's Nesquik on a hot day, and Milo on a cold night, a mix of both on a cold day and a hot night.

    November 30, 2009

  • What's Milo?

    January 20, 2010

  • Drink powder made from malted barley, cocoa and sugar. I can't be arsed linking to their nutrition-myth-laden website.

    January 20, 2010

  • Well I can!

    But don't go by the website...it really turns you off. The good thing with Milo is that it doesn't have to overly-sweet artificial taste that Nesquik does, but unlike Nesquik it will not disolve in cold milk.

    (I can't believe you haven't heard of Milo!! I thought it was universal.)

    January 20, 2010

  • And now Cadbury's has been taken over by those soulless Kraft people. Goshdarnit!

    January 20, 2010

  • I got used to Milo in Australia, but still don't really like it that much. On the other hand, anything by Nestle turns me off because I remember that whole formula-for-babies-in-the-developing-world thing and I just try to avoid Nestle products. It's Hershey's syrup for me, babe.

    January 20, 2010

  • Ditto. Hershey's syrup.

    January 20, 2010

  • I can't believe you haven't heard of Milo, either, with all the time I've been around...

    On another note, I just opened a Dove chocolate -- you know, the kind with the really cheesy inspirational messages on the inside of the wrapper. I like to have a chocolate every now and then, but the wrapper told me, "YOU are that superwoman. Enjoy!" Now, I'm a far cry from anything resembling our bizarrely Nietzschean comic character, but it would take a whole lot more to make me a superwoman...I can't help but feel like I'm either under a stigma or the wrong end of a stereotype or something like that...

    January 21, 2010

  • Haha Milo(srdenstvi, not Milo chocolate)! Well, that's what happens when you take the time to read chocolate wrappers.

    *they mess up your mind...* ;-)

    What's Hershey's syrup?

    January 21, 2010

  • Read all about it here, Possible--but try to ignore all that sugar-free nonsense. Eeesh.

    January 21, 2010

  • I find this quote very amusing:

    'Monseigneur was about to take his chocolate... Yes. It took four men, all four a-blaze with gorgeous decoration, and the Chief of them unable to exist with fewer than two gold watches in his pocket, emulative of the noble and chaste fashion set by Monseigneur, to conduct the happy chocolate to Monseigneur's lips. One lacquey carried the chocolate-pot into the sacred presence; a second, milled and frothed the chocolate with the little instrument he bore for that function; a third, presented the favoured napkin; a fourth (he of the two gold watches), poured the chololate out. It was impossible for Monseigneur to dispense with one of these attendants on the chocolate and hold his high place under the admiring Heavens. Deep would have been the blot upon his escutcheon if his cholocate had been ignobly waited on by only three men; he must have died of two.'

    A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens

    June 10, 2010

  • Never mind the Monseigneur, it's only what chocolate deserves.

    June 10, 2010

  • from perhaps Eastern Nahuatl "chicolatl" meaning "beaten drink" or "xocolātl" derived from "xococ" meaning sour or bitter and "ātl" meaning water or drink.

    other thoughts:

    see discussion Ch(a)o(s)colate or 'to stir things up'

    October 2, 2010

  • From cyberspace:

    C = carbon

    Ho = holmium

    Co = cobalt

    La = lanthanum

    Te = tellurium

    CHoCoLaTe - Better living through chemistry!

    February 3, 2012

  • "However much moralists and advocates of simple and sensible living complain, the flaunting of fashionable and expensive goods is a constant social fact. What changes is the nature of such goods. What provides status and pleasure in one historical period may not carry over into the next. True, there are some enduring forms of prestige objects, such as fine clothing or jewelry, that mark class distinction even when specific fashions change: there has never been a time when rubies weren't precious. Most goods, however, rise and fall in perceived social value. ... Hot chocolate was all the rage in the eighteenth century and has left souvenirs of importance in fine porcelain collections, but elegance in the world of chocolate has moved to exclusive or artisanal candies, while the beverage is not mostly just for children."

    Paul Freedman, Out of the East: Spices and the Medieval Imagination (New Haven and London: Yale UP, 2008), 7.

    This last line makes me unutterably sad. I want to go drink some killer hot chocolate right now.

    October 9, 2017