wok

American  

[wok] / wɒk /

noun

• woks
  plural

1. a large bowl-shaped pan used in cooking Chinese food.

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wok British  

/ wɒk /

noun

1. a large metal Chinese cooking pot having a curved base like a bowl and traditionally with a wooden handle

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Other Word Forms

Noun Inflected Forms

• woks
  plural

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.

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

wok woks

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

It's reminiscent of a cooking wok or the upswept eaves of a Chinese temple.

From BBC ● Sep. 29, 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

So I crouched lower and tightened my fingers around the wok handle.

From "City of the Plague God" by Sarwat Chadda

So when I heard that an all-electric food hall on Microsoft's campus in Redmond, Washington, featured a pair of custom-made induction woks, I was eager to try out a climate-friendly stir-fry.

From Salon ● May 15, 2024

He traveled to the Malaysian street food mecca of Penang and marveled at the vendors firing their woks with charcoal.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 9, 2022

Roberto’s follows an Asian fusion restaurant, which left behind multiple woks when it closed.

From Washington Post ● Apr. 15, 2022

Noodle stir-fries are classic street food, cooked to order by vendors who can wield giant woks and dip into dozens of bowls of ingredients.

From New York Times ● Mar. 17, 2022

Cooks dropped fish heads into woks of hissing oil, and urchins threaded their way underfoot searching for unguarded valuables.

From "Artemis Fowl" by Eoin Colfer