Broth

How to spell broth

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce broth

What does broth mean?

1. nounA thin savoury liquid made by simmering meat, bones, fish, or vegetables in water.

Broth in a sentence

• She simmered the chicken bones for hours to make a rich broth.

• A bowl of warm broth settled his stomach after the long flight.

Where does broth come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Broth comes straight from Old English broþ, a native Germanic word for a liquid in which meat, bones, or vegetables have been boiled. It is closely tied to the verb 'to brew', since both descend from an ancient root meaning 'to bubble, boil, or ferment', the same idea that gave us 'broil' and the Latin-derived 'fervent'. The word has stayed remarkably stable for well over a thousand years, keeping its short vowel and its 'th' ending intact. Related forms appear across the old Germanic languages, and the word never needed borrowing from French or Latin, which is why it stays so plain and short. The spelling trap is small but real: writers occasionally double the consonant or misjudge the vowel, even though the form has barely changed since Anglo-Saxon kitchens.

How the word is built

• broth (single Old English root broþ, related to brēowan 'to brew')