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''gumbo'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜Definition｜1st｜20260609164652-00-⌔

gumbo - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

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Noun

gumbo (countable and uncountable, plural gumbos)

  • (countable) Synonym of okra: the plant or its edible capsules.
  • (countable) A soup or stew popular in Louisiana, consisting of a strong stock, meat or shellfish, a thickener (often okra), and the “Holy Trinity” of celery, bell peppers, and onions.
  • (uncountable) A fine silty soil that when wet becomes very thick and heavy.
    • ✤ The team stuck fast in the black muck, and every effort to extricate them served only to imbed them more hopelessly in the sticky gumbo.1
    • ✤ There are no poorer roads in all the United States than the “gumbo” roads of the south— gumbo being the name give a certain kind of mud or clay that is particularly sticky, clings tenaciously, seems to have no bottom, and will not support any weight.2
    • ✤ The red gumbo soil uttered ugly sucking sounds at the touch of a man’s boot.3

Etymology

Borrowed from Louisiana French gombo, possibly via Louisiana Creole gombo, from Kimbundu ingombo, plural of kingombo (“okra”); compare Portuguese quingombó.45

Pronunciation

  • (General American) IPA: /ˈɡʌm.boʊ/
  • Rhymes: -ʌmbəʊ

Printed 2026-06-28.

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Footnotes

  1. 1909, Ralph Connor, chapter 11, in The Foreigner: ↩

  2. 1914 April, “Making Good Roads by Firing Poor Ones”, in Popular Mechanics, page 567: ↩

  3. 1950 July 3, “Labor: Trouble at Lowland”, in Time: ↩

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

  5. Douglas Harper (2001–2026), “gumbo”, in Online Etymology Dictionary. ↩

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