tallow
Americannoun
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the fatty tissue or suet of animals.
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the harder fat of sheep, cattle, etc., separated by melting from the fibrous and membranous matter naturally mixed with it, and used to make candles, soap, etc.
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any of various similar fatty substances.
vegetable tallow.
verb (used with object)
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tallows,
present (3rd person singular)
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tallowed,
past participle, past
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tallowing
present participle
noun
verb
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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tallowsimple
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tallowssimple
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have tallowedperfect
-
has tallowedperfect
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am tallowingprogressive
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are tallowingprogressive
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is tallowingprogressive
-
have been tallowingperfect progressive
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has been tallowingperfect progressive
Past
-
tallowedsimple
-
had tallowedperfect
-
was tallowingprogressive
-
were tallowingprogressive
-
had been tallowingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of tallow
1300–50; Middle English talow, talgh; cognate with German Talg
Explanation
In the old days, candles were mostly made from tallow, a form of animal fat that provided an inexpensive way for people to light their homes at night. Tallow is rendered animal fat, most often from beef or mutton. It's similar to suet or lard, other forms of animal fat, and has been useful in various ways through the years because it doesn't go bad at room temperature, stays solid, and is cheap. Today it's most commonly used for soap making or animal feed, though it can also be used in making biodiesel fuel.
Vocabulary lists containing tallow
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
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Crispin: The Cross of Lead
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Old Yeller
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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:
French fries are cooked in beef tallow instead of vegetable oil.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 30, 2026
Animal-derived skin care products are gaining popularity, from salmon sperm facials to moisturizers made with beef tallow — the fat around a cow’s internal organs.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 27, 2026
The enriched flour, high-fructose corn syrup, and tallow that help make up the American classic give each small sponge cake about 65 days to be consumed.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 8, 2026
The Make America Healthy Again movement, for which Kennedy is the de facto leader, promotes a diet heavy in meat and animal products, such as butter, beef tallow and raw milk.
From MarketWatch ● May 19, 2026
For two days they had been boiling the small gray bayberries that Kit and Judith had gathered in the fields, and Rachel had skimmed off the thick greenish tallow.
From "The Witch of Blackbird Pond" by Elizabeth George Speare
I applied beef and bison tallows from three companies.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 27, 2026
North American tallows are, as a general rule, much paler in colour than those of South America, but do not compare with them in consistence.
From The Handbook of Soap Manufacture by W. H. Simmons
There’s floors upon floors beneath, stored with jute and dye-woods, teas, coffees, spices, tobaccos, and lowest of all on the ground floor and in the cellarage, tallows in great hogsheads.
From Adventures of Working Men From the Notebook of a Working Surgeon by George Manville Fenn
Their only question will be that of their Legendre, or some oilier of their legislative butchers: How he cuts up; how he tallows in the caul or on the kidneys.
From The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 05 (of 12) by Edmund Burke
The oil and tallows which are chiefly carbon and hydrogen, unite with the oxygen of the air and form carbonic acid and watery vapor, producing heat during the process.
From American Woman's Home by Catharine Esther Beecher
"I've never tried to make my figures come out this way," he explained last week, pointing to a tall figure reminiscent of a grotesquely tallowed candle.
From Time Magazine Archive
The ships were laid on shore and scraped and tallowed.
From English Seamen in the Sixteenth Century Lectures Delivered at Oxford Easter Terms 1893-4 by James Anthony Froude
Slowly they collected at the edge of the tallowed collar, trembled in their fullness for an instant, and fell, another beginning the process instantly.
From Widdershins by Oliver [pseud.] Onions
When a whaling ship is beset in the ice of Davis Straits, there is little work for her second engineer, once the engines have been nicely tallowed down.
From The Literary World Seventh Reader by John Calvin Metcalf
No vessel would go far unless its under-water parts were either sheathed, tarred, or tallowed; for sea-worms burrow alarmingly, and 'whiskers' grow like the obnoxious weeds they are.
From All Afloat A Chronicle of Craft and Waterways by William Charles Henry Wood
While the ships, however, were on the keel, and the men busy heaving, scrubbing, and tallowing, they were attacked by a large body of the natives.
From The Monarchs of the Main, Volume III (of 3) Or, Adventures of the Buccaneers by Walter Thornbury
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.
