porridge
Americannoun
noun
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a dish made from oatmeal or another cereal, cooked in water or milk to a thick consistency
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slang a term in prison (esp in the phrase do porridge )
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of porridge
1525–35; variant of earlier poddidge, akin to pottage
Compare meaning
How does porridge compare to similar and commonly confused words? Explore the most common comparisons:
Explanation
Porridge is a thick, warm type of food similar to oatmeal. It's often a breakfast food. When you boil oats in milk or water, the end result of porridge. Porridge is served in a bowl and eaten with a spoon. It’s usually served for breakfast and is famous for appearing in the fairy tale of Goldilocks. Porridge is the food that's too hot, too cold, and then just right.
Vocabulary lists containing porridge
"The Tempest," Vocabulary from Acts 1 and 2
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Sideways Stories from Wayside 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:
Without energy exposure, it can put you right off your porridge.
From MarketWatch ● Jul. 8, 2026
Many remain convinced a tsunami could yet strike, he said, as government aid workers ladled rice porridge into bowls for the evacuees.
From Barron's ● Jun. 19, 2026
Good sources of B6 are meat and fish, but it's also present in other foods, including porridge oats, potatoes and chickpeas.
From BBC ● Apr. 22, 2026
They sit in similar registers — closer to porridge than broth, a texture that my brain immediately interprets as nourishing.
From Salon ● Jan. 29, 2026
“That sounds like something that would grow on a bowl of porridge left out for too long.”
From "The City Beautiful" by Aden Polydoros
Hygiene products like wet wipes, gels, soaps, toothpastes and porridges are also flying off the shelves in Poland, according to drugstore chain Rossmann.
From Reuters ● Mar. 16, 2022
Historically, whatever was ripe and ready was hailed in many forms: in soups and stews such as afang soup, and in porridges such as asaro and ubek, to name just a few.
From New York Times ● Nov. 8, 2021
Because polenta and grits are both cornmeal porridges, it seemed a fun and tasty way to take the Italian-Southern food connection a bit further.
From Seattle Times ● Feb. 5, 2019
Jenn Louis sometimes serves savory porridges at Ray, her Israeli-inspired restaurant in Portland, Ore., and she includes a Thai-style coconut-milk rice congee in her latest cookbook, “The Book of Greens.”
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jan. 5, 2018
Mama was always cooking up nourishing broths and porridges for forgotten old men and pale young mothers—on days, that is, when she herself was strong enough to stand at the stove.
From "The Hiding Place" by Corrie ten Boom
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.
