Porridge

How to spell porridge

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce porridge

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does porridge mean?

1. nounA hot breakfast dish made by boiling oats or oatmeal in water or milk until thick.

Porridge in a sentence

• She stirred a bowl of porridge on the stove before work.

• Oats simmered slowly make a smoother, creamier porridge.

Where does porridge come from?

Language of origin: French

Porridge began life as the word pottage, the name for a thick soup or stew of vegetables and grains boiled in a pot. That word came into Middle English from the Old French potage, which meant simply 'something cooked in a pot', built on pot, the same humble cooking vessel we still use today. Over the 1500s and 1600s English speakers softened and reshaped pottage into porridge, the shift from 't' to 'rr' probably helped along by the related word porray, an old name for a broth of leeks and herbs. As the dish narrowed to mean specifically oats or oatmeal boiled until thick, the spelling porridge settled into place. The odd-looking ending, that '-idge' rather than a plain '-age', is the real spelling trap, and remembering its kinship with the everyday word 'pot' is a useful anchor.

How the word is built

• porr- (alteration of pottage, from pot)
• -idge (variant of -age, a collective noun ending)