Parmesan

How to spell parmesan

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce parmesan

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does parmesan mean?

1. nounA hard, salty Italian cheese, usually grated and used as a topping for pasta and other savoury dishes.

Parmesan in a sentence

• She grated fresh parmesan over the steaming bowl of spaghetti.

• The recipe calls for a generous handful of grated parmesan stirred into the risotto.

Where does parmesan come from?

Language of origin: French

This word comes from French parmesan, which in turn rests on the Italian parmigiano, meaning literally 'of Parma', the city and province in northern Italy where the famous hard cheese is produced. The Italian form is built on the place name Parma plus an adjective ending that signals origin, much as 'Neapolitan' means 'of Naples'. English borrowed the French spelling in the middle of the sixteenth century, when this prized cheese was already a luxury import, and kept the French look of the word rather than the native Italian parmigiano. The full traditional cheese is still called Parmigiano-Reggiano in Italy, with legal protection of its name, while 'parmesan' became the looser English label for the grated style. The spelling trap is purely visual for an English speaker: a single 's' that is pronounced like a 'z', and the unstressed middle vowel, so writers are unsure whether it is 'parmesan', 'parmasan', or 'parmesian'.

How the word is built

• parmes- (from Parma, the Italian city)
• -an (suffix meaning 'belonging to' or 'coming from')