wok
Americannoun
noun
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.
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
Same for "wok on a grill"? I’ve always been obsessed with live-fire cooking—it’s one of the oldest, purest forms of preparing food.
From Salon • Apr. 29, 2025
I backed away, waving the wok in front of me.
From "City of the Plague God" by Sarwat Chadda
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.
