roast

UK/ɹəʊst/US/ɹoʊst/

verbB22 meanings Common in everyday speech and writing · #2,521 of 15,258leans spoken

Other forms: roasted, roasting, roasts

To roast is to cook meat or vegetables in the dry heat of an oven until brown. Roast a chicken, roast potatoes, roasted vegetables.

The browning is the point, and it needs dry heat and room: vegetables piled on top of each other steam instead. Meat can also be roasted on a turning spit over a fire, and coffee beans and nuts are roasted too. A roast is also the piece of meat itself, and a Sunday roast is the big British meal built around one. To roast somebody is to make jokes about them at length, usually friendly ones, and a roast is now a whole comic show.

Definitions of roast

1verbroastTo cook in the dry heat of an oven until brown.B2
“Roast the potatoes until they are golden and crisp on the outside.”
- Said"I'll roast a chicken at the weekend; come round about two."
- WrittenThey roasted the potatoes in goose fat until the edges were crisp and golden.
- UsedRoast at 220 degrees for the first twenty minutes, then turn it down.
- ContrastRoast, not bake. Bread, cakes and whole potatoes in their skins are baked; meat and chopped vegetables are roasted, hotter and with fat. bake →
- Not thisGrilled peppers are not roasted ones. Grilling cooks one side at a time over bars or a flame; roasting surrounds the food with dry heat, usually in an oven.
- Exchange"Roast or boil them?""Roast. It's a celebration."
- SimplyRoast the carrots. They go brown.
Patternroast + noun (chicken, potatoes, vegetables) · roast dinner · a roast · roasted / roasting
2verbmockTo make jokes about somebody at length, usually in a friendly way.C1
“His friends roasted him at the wedding with stories about his terrible cooking.”

Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.

roast is a cooking method.

Remember it

ROAST → the TOAST of meat, browned in the heat

Toast is bread browned in the heat; roast is the same thing done to a whole chicken for two hours.

hooks ontotoast

Where it comes from

Old French rostir comes from a Frankish verb meaning to roast on a grate. Roster, from a gridiron, is a distant relative.

Proto-Indo-European
*Hrews- — to crackle; roast
Proto-Germanic
*raustijaną — to roast
Frankish
*rōstijan — to roast, broil
Old French
rostir — to roast, to torture with fire
Middle English
rosten
English, today
roast

From Middle English rosten, a borrowing from Old French rostir (“to roast, to torture with fire”), from Frankish rōstijan (“to roast, broil”), from Proto-Germanic raustijaną (“to roast”), from Proto-Indo-European Hrews- (“to crackle; roast”). Cognate with stq rosterje (“to roast”), Dutch roosten, roosteren (“to roast”), German rösten (“to roast”). Displaced native breden, bræden (“to roast”), from brǣdan, related to braten. The noun is from Middle English roste, from Old French rost, roste, from the verb.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in In the Kitchen

Practise this word

roast in the wild

Any piece of meat, especially red meat, that has been cooked in this fashion is called a roast.
Roasting
A Sunday roast or roast dinner is a British dish traditionally eaten on Sunday.
Sunday roast
Other names for this meal include Sunday lunch, Sunday dinner, roast dinner and full roast.
Sunday roast
Roast beef is a dish of beef that is roasted, generally served as the main dish of a meal.
Roast beef
In the Anglosphere, roast beef is one of the meats often served at Sunday lunch or dinner.
Roast beef

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

Related words

Definitions of roast

1verbroastTo cook in the dry heat of an oven until brown.B2

“Roast the potatoes until they are golden and crisp on the outside.”

Said"I'll roast a chicken at the weekend; come round about two."
WrittenThey roasted the potatoes in goose fat until the edges were crisp and golden.
UsedRoast at 220 degrees for the first twenty minutes, then turn it down.
ContrastRoast, not bake. Bread, cakes and whole potatoes in their skins are baked; meat and chopped vegetables are roasted, hotter and with fat. bake →
Not thisGrilled peppers are not roasted ones. Grilling cooks one side at a time over bars or a flame; roasting surrounds the food with dry heat, usually in an oven.
Exchange"Roast or boil them?""Roast. It's a celebration."
SimplyRoast the carrots. They go brown.

Patternroast + noun (chicken, potatoes, vegetables) · roast dinner · a roast · roasted / roasting

2verbmockTo make jokes about somebody at length, usually in a friendly way.C1

“His friends roasted him at the wedding with stories about his terrible cooking.”

Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.

roast is a cooking method.