wok
Americannoun
-
woks
plural
noun
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of wok
1955–60; < dialectal Chinese (Guangdong) wohk pan, equivalent to Chinese huo
Explanation
A wok is a deep, rounded pan that's used for cooking, especially stir frying. If you've eaten at a Chinese restaurant, you've had food cooked in a wok. A wok is shaped like a big, deep bowl, and while it's most common in South China, it's used all over Asia, and increasingly in the rest of the world as well. The shape of a wok works particularly well for stir frying; the bottom gets much hotter than the sides, and food can be cooked quickly. The word wok comes from Cantonese, and it was first used in English in the mid-20th century.
Vocabulary lists containing wok
The Melting Pot: Food Words from Other Languages
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World Cuisine - Introductory
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World Cuisine - Middle School and High School
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
He has a taste for street food, and appears on social media wearing a T-shirt and shorts while stir-frying with a wok, or performing 1980s Thai pop on the saxophone or piano.
From Barron's ● Feb. 8, 2026
We taste-tested two robot wok restaurants in L.A. to determine whose cooking reigns supreme.
From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 21, 2025
At 75, she’s been at it for more than half-a-century and still frequently works the sole wok at the Merry Go Round.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 26, 2025
A specialist wok hob had also been delivered to the hotel’s kitchen.
From BBC ● Aug. 22, 2024
So even though the wok trembled in my sweaty grip, even though I could hardly breathe for the fear gripping my chest, I charged.
From "City of the Plague God" by Sarwat Chadda
Jon Kung, a Detroit-based chef and TikTok personality who advocates for induction cooking, says that induction stoves designed specifically for woks can help with this issue.
From Salon ● May 15, 2024
No longer out of reach for China’s middle class, beef now sizzles in home woks and restaurant kitchens.
From Seattle Times ● Nov. 2, 2023
He traveled to the Malaysian street food mecca of Penang and marveled at the vendors firing their woks with charcoal.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 9, 2022
Roberto’s follows an Asian fusion restaurant, which left behind multiple woks when it closed.
From Washington Post ● Apr. 15, 2022
Cooks dropped fish heads into woks of hissing oil, and urchins threaded their way underfoot searching for unguarded valuables.
From "Artemis Fowl" by Eoin Colfer
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
