Other forms: stews, stewed, stewing
A stew is meat and vegetables cooked slowly together in one pot. Beef stew, a pot of stew, let it stew.
The slowness is what makes it: long gentle heat breaks the connective tissue in cheap cuts down to gelatine, which is why a stew is better made with the tough meat than the tender. To let somebody stew means leaving them to worry. Note that the word comes from an old word for a heated bathhouse.
1nounstewMeat and vegetables cooked slowly in one pot.
“On cold evenings, my mum made a big pot of beef stew.”
2verbleaveTo leave somebody to worry.
“Don't tell him the result yet; let him stew for a while.”
stew is a dish.
Old French estuve meant a heated room or bathhouse. The cooking sense came from cooking in a closed vessel with steam.
Ancient Greek
τῦφος — smoke, steam
Vulgar Latin
*extufāre
Medieval Latin
stupha
Old French
estuve — bath, bathhouse
Anglo-Norman
estouve
Middle English
stewe
English, today
stew
Built from
From Middle English stewe, stue, from Anglo-Norman estouve, Old French estuve (“bath, bathhouse”) (modern French étuve), from Medieval Latin stupha, of uncertain origin. Perhaps from Vulgar Latin extufāre, from ex- + Ancient Greek τῦφος (“smoke, steam”), from τύφω (“to smoke”). See also Italian stufare, Portuguese estufar. Compare also Old English stufbæþ (“a hot-air bath, vapour bath”); see stove.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA