Marshmallow

How to spell marshmallow

11 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce marshmallow

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does marshmallow mean?

1. nounA soft, spongy sweet made from sugar and gelatine, often toasted over a fire.

Marshmallow in a sentence

• She dropped a single marshmallow into her hot chocolate.

• The children toasted every marshmallow until it turned golden.

Where does marshmallow come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word comes straight from Old English, where it was formed by joining mersc, meaning 'marsh' or 'boggy ground', with mealwe, the name of the mallow plant (itself borrowed earlier from the Latin malva). The compound originally named a real plant, Althaea officinalis, a mallow that grows in salty marshes, and that botanical sense is the older one. For centuries the soothing sap from the plant's root was boiled with sugar to make a soft, medicinal sweet, and the name of the plant was simply transferred to the confection. Modern marshmallows no longer contain any of the plant at all, relying on gelatine and sugar instead, yet the old name stuck. The spelling trap lives in the second half: it is mallow, the plant, not 'mellow', so the vowel is an 'a', even though the candy feels soft and mellow.

How the word is built

• marsh (wet, boggy ground)
• mallow (the mallow plant, from Old English mealwe)