Mayonnaise

How to spell mayonnaise

10 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce mayonnaise

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does mayonnaise mean?

1. nounA thick, creamy cold sauce made by emulsifying egg yolk with oil and vinegar or lemon juice.

Mayonnaise in a sentence

• She spread a thin layer of mayonnaise on the sandwich bread.

• The recipe calls for two spoonfuls of mayonnaise to bind the potato salad.

Where does mayonnaise come from?

Language of origin: French

This word came into English from French in the early nineteenth century, and its exact origin is genuinely disputed, which is part of why the spelling feels slippery. The most popular story links it to Mahon, the harbour town of Port Mahon on the Spanish island of Menorca, suggesting a sauce mahonnaise was named after a French capture of the port in 1756. A rival theory derives it from the Old French word moyeu, meaning the yolk of an egg, which is the essential ingredient of the cold emulsion. Yet another account ties it to the French verb manier, meaning to handle or to stir, describing how the sauce is worked together. Whatever the true source, French cooks fixed the ending as -aise, the feminine adjective form seen in other sauce names, and that doubled n followed by -aise is precisely the part English writers tend to get wrong.

How the word is built

• mayonn- (uncertain French root)
• -aise (French feminine adjectival suffix used in sauce names)