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''pilaf'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜Definition｜1st｜20260708194133-00-⌔

pilaf - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

Noun

pilaf (countable and uncountable, plural pilafs)

  • A dish made by browning grain, typically rice, in oil and then cooking it with a seasoned broth, to which meat and/or vegetables may be added.
    • ✤ My spirits rose as I passed among the tents and savored the aroma of steaming pots of pilaf and the long skewers of shashlyk roasting over the open fires.1
    • ✤ Charlie Vaughn, the tribal chairman, dismissed his critics at the opening as people who are “eating tofu and pilaf and sitting in Phoenix with their plasma-screen TVs”.2

Etymology

Borrowed from Ottoman Turkish پلاو (modern Turkish pilav), from Classical Persian پلاو (pilāw), from Hindi पुलाव (pulāv)/Urdu پُلاؤ (pulāo), from Sauraseni Prakrit ﹡𑀧𑀼𑀮𑀸𑀕 (﹡pulāga), from Sanskrit पुलाक (pulāka), which is probably of Dravidian origin.345 Akin to Tamil புழுக்கு (puḻukku, “cooked rice”). Doublet of pulao.

Pronunciation

  • (Australian) IPA: /pɪlɐːf/
  • (Received Pronunciation) IPA: /piːlɑːf/
  • (General American) enPR: pee-lăf, IPA: /piːlæf/
  • Audio (US): 🔊

Printed 2026-07-08.

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Footnotes

  1. 1952, Cothburn O’Neal, chapter 1, in Master of the World (Avon; N158), New York, N.Y.: Avon Books, published 1967, →OCLC, book 1, page 17: ↩

  2. 2007 March 9, “Great divide: The fight for America’s heritage”, in The Independent ‎, archived from the original on 1 July 2022: ↩

  3. “pilaf”, in Merriam-Webster.com Online Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster, 1996–present. ↩

  4. “pilaf”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022. ↩

  5. Burrow, T.; Emeneau, M. B. (1984), “4315”, in A Dravidian etymological dictionary, 2nd edition, Oxford University Press, →ISBN, page 381. ↩