Definitions

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

  • noun A well-seasoned meat or fish stew, usually with vegetables.
  • noun A mixture of diverse elements.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • To make a ragout of; to make a spicy mixture of; hence figuratively, to give spiciness or piquancy to, as speech or literary style.
  • noun A dish of meat (usually mutton or veal) and vegetables cut small, stewed brown, and highly seasoned.
  • noun Figuratively, a spicy mixture; any piquant combination of persons or things.

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

  • noun A dish made of pieces of meat, stewed, and highly seasoned.

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

  • noun a stew of meat and vegetables mixed together
  • noun by extension any stew, soup, or sauce

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

  • noun well-seasoned stew of meat and vegetables

Etymologies

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

[French ragoût, from ragoûter, to revive the taste, from Old French ragouster : re-, re- + a-, to (from Latin ad-; see ad–) + gost, taste (from Latin gustus; see geus- in Indo-European roots).]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From French ragoût.

Support

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

Examples

  • Wilt thou cut off my hand, because I ate of a cumin ragout and did not wash?

    The Book of The Thousand Nights And A Night 2006

  • When he ended his verse we said to him, “Allah upon thee, tell us thy reason for refusing to eat of the cumin ragout?”

    The Book of The Thousand Nights And A Night 2006

  • Meanwhile, they set before me a tray of food where on were various meats and among those dishes, which were enough to daze the wits, was a bowl of cumin ragout containing chickens breasts, fricandoed569 and flavoured with sugar, pistachios, musk and rose water.

    The Book of The Thousand Nights And A Night 2006

  • When, therefore, you brought me the cumin ragout my colour changed and I said to myself, “It was this very dish that caused the cutting off of my thumbs and great toes;” and, when you forced me, I said, “Needs must I fulfil the oath I have sworn.”

    The Book of The Thousand Nights And A Night 2006

  • 571 I will teach thee how to eat cumin ragout without washing thy hands!

    The Book of The Thousand Nights And A Night 2006

  • 570 Then she took from her side a plaited scourge and came down with it on my back and the place where I sit till her forearms were benumbed and I fainted away from the much beating; when she said to the handmaids, “Take him and carry him to the Chief of Police, that he may strike off the hand wherewith he ate of the cumin ragout, and which he did not wash.”

    The Book of The Thousand Nights And A Night 2006

  • Quoth she, Thou madman’ what made thee eat of cumin ragout and forget to wash thy hand?

    The Book of The Thousand Nights And A Night 2006

  • "Oh dear! oh dear!" cried Jeanne; "all the chocolate ragout is spilt, and the whipped-up egg is mixed with the orange-juice soup.

    The Tapestry Room: A Child's Romance 1893

  • Then she went away and I saw no more of her for ten days, during which time she sent me meat and drink by a slave girl who told me that she had fallen sick from the smell of the cumin ragout.

    The Book of The Thousand Nights And A Night 2006

  • Once again the cooker boiled, and for that night we had a really good square meal -- more than enough of everything -- pemmican with pieces of pony meat in it, a chocolate biscuit, "ragout" raisins, caramels, ginger, cocoa, butter, and a double ration of biscuits.

    South with Scott Edward Ratcliffe Garth Russell Evans Mountevans 1918

Comments

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

  • At our entrance, we observed several men employed in preparing dinner; and there issued from the ragouts they were taking up, a vapour which conciliated the palate through the medium of the nostrils.

    - Lesage, The Adventures of Gil Blas of Santillane, tr. Smollett, bk 3 ch. 4

    September 13, 2008

  • Smollett here eschews the construction "...which smelled good".

    September 13, 2008