dumpling
Americannoun
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dumplings
plural
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a rounded mass of steamed and seasoned dough, often served in soup or with stewed meat.
-
a dessert consisting of a wrapping of dough enclosing sliced apples or other fruit, boiled or baked.
-
a short or stout person.
noun
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a small ball of dough cooked and served with stew
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a pudding consisting of a round pastry case filled with fruit
apple dumpling
-
informal a short plump person
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of dumpling
1590–1600; dump (of uncertain origin) + -ling 1
Compare meaning
How does dumpling compare to similar and commonly confused words? Explore the most common comparisons:
Explanation
A dumpling is a delicious, bite-sized food that's made of savory ingredients wrapped in dough and cooked. Chinese dumplings can be steamed, boiled, or fried. If you order dumplings in a Chinese restaurant, you'll get a filling made with vegetables, meat, or fish — it might be a wonton, cooked in a soup, or a potsticker, steamed and then lightly fried. Most cultures have some version of a savory dumpling, and many have sweet dumplings as well, like apple dumplings, which have a fruit filling wrapped in pastry.
Vocabulary lists containing dumpling
Out of the Dust
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Foods from Asia
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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:
The city has what is regarded as Central Europe’s largest Chinatown, about a $15 cab ride from the center, where Dabao Jiaozi is the dumpling purveyor of first resort.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 29, 2026
"We have jerk pork, we have rice and peas, we have jerk chicken, curry goat, stewed chicken, fried dumpling and plantain," she said.
From BBC ● Aug. 31, 2026
It has all the flavors of a dumpling filling, none of the assembly.
From Salon ● May 22, 2026
But that has largely been the result of viewers dumpling cable, not actual growth in the market, data show.
From MarketWatch ● Mar. 30, 2026
He was sure there had only been one dumpling in the morning.
From "When the Sea Turned to Silver" by Grace Lin
“They are launching research ships as fast as dropping dumplings into a pot,” said Su Chih-chieh, an associate professor at National Taiwan University’s Institute of Oceanography, which operates one of Taiwan’s research ships.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 30, 2026
She started crying over a dinner of chicken and dumplings she made for her family while talking about the prospect of leaving their longtime home.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 25, 2026
They often resemble dumplings, but children "can't see what's inside the box so they're excited to see which one they get".
From BBC ● Aug. 11, 2026
This recipe — a skillet dinner built from frozen dumplings, frozen corn, a bag of peppers and onions, coconut milk and miso — I should confess, lives much closer to the latter.
From Salon ● Jul. 4, 2026
He went back to eating chicken and dumplings.
From "Among the Hidden" by Margaret Peterson Haddix
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Get a wordDefinitions 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.
