omelet

American  

[om-lit, om-uh-] / ˈɒm lɪt, ˈɒm ə- /

Or omelette

noun

omelets plural

1. eggs beaten until frothy, often combined with other ingredients, as herbs, chopped ham, cheese, or jelly, and cooked until set.

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Other Word Forms

Noun Inflected Forms

• omelets
  plural

Etymology

Origin of omelet

1605–15; < French omelette, earlier amelette, metathetic form of alemette, variant of alemelle literally, thin plate, variant of Old French lemelle < Latin lāmella. See lamella, -et

Explanation

An omelet is a dish you might order for breakfast or brunch — it's kind of like a folded pancake made of beaten eggs, sometimes with the addition of vegetables, cheese, or meat. Yum. A good omelet is a little bit fluffy, but firm enough to contain its filling. You cook an omelet by whisking eggs with a bit of water or milk and cooking them quickly over high heat without stirring. You can then fold the omelet in half to serve it. While the French word omelette was first used in the 1600s, the omelet itself may be more than two hundred years older than that. The Latin root, lamella, means "thin plate."

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

omelet omelets

"We have a saying in the breakfast business that you can't make an omelet without cracking a few eggs, you know?" he said.

From Barron's ● Mar. 21, 2026

Serve them on a charcuterie board, snack on slices straight from the package, or tuck them into an omelet.

From Salon ● Dec. 4, 2025

Fit for Sunday mornings at Balmoral, this one will weather decades of omelet service and crossword solving.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 20, 2025

I usually get a skillet or an omelet, then combine that with a waffle.

From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 7, 2025

Clearly I did, because here I am at his kitchen table with the fragrance of an omelet smothered in some kind of tomatoey-oniony-garlicky sauce tickling my olfactory epithelium.

From "Odd One Out" by Nic Stone

He cooks the players omelets before important matches and grills steaks after huge wins.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Feb. 11, 2026

Earlier this year, Cal-Maine acquired Echo Lake Foods, which makes ready-to-eat breakfast foods, such as omelets, scrambled eggs, and pancakes.

From Barron's ● Jan. 6, 2026

Though the Country Kitchen employees had to stay home with no pay for months, they are back now, serving chili cheese fries, omelets and buffalo burgers.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 12, 2025

If you’ve got a stockpile of eggs and you’re sick of endless omelets, why not make something that uses several eggs and lasts longer than one meal?

From Salon ● Apr. 5, 2025

The farm offered omelets made from ostrich eggs, though in fact the eggs came from domestic chickens.

From "The Devil in the White City" by Erik Larson