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tallow

UK/ˈtæləʊ/US/ˈtæloʊ/
nounC2Rare in speech; mostly a word you read · #14,044 of 15,258leans written

Tallow is hard animal fat used to make candles and soap. A tallow candle, render the tallow, smell of tallow.

It burnt with a smoky flame and a foul smell, which is why beeswax was for churches and the rich, and tallow for everybody else. It is rendered by slow heating, and it is still used in soap today.

FotoosvanRobin · CC BY-SA 2.0

Definitions of tallow

  1. 1nountallowHard animal fat used to make candles and soap.C2

    “Soap was once made by boiling tallow with ashes and water.”

tallow is a fat.

Where it comes from

Old English tealg names the fat, from a Germanic root meaning something sticky.

  1. Proto-Indo-European

    *del- — to flow

  2. Proto-Germanic

    *talgaz

  3. Proto-West Germanic

    *talg

  4. Old English

    *tealh

  5. Middle English

    talow

  6. English, today

    tallow

Built from

  • telg · Old English — dye

From Middle English talow, talgh, from Old English tealh, tealg, (compare Old English tælg, telg (“dye”)), from Proto-West Germanic talg, from Proto-Germanic talgaz (compare Dutch talg, German Talg), from Proto-Indo-European del- (“to flow”) (compare mga delt (“dew”), xcl տեղ (“heavy rain”)).

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in A Song of Ice and Fire

Practise this word

tallow in the wild

  • The primary use of suet is in tallow, although it is also used as an ingredient in cooking, especially in traditional baked puddings, such as British Christmas pudding.

    Suet

  • Suet is rendered into tallow by melting and extended simmering, followed by straining, then cooling.

    Suet

  • In industry, tallow is not strictly defined as beef or mutton suet.

    Tallow

  • In this context, tallow is animal fat that conforms to certain technical criteria, including its melting point.

    Tallow

  • The specific epithet sebifera is derived from Latin sebum (meaning "tallow") and fero (meaning "to bear"), thus "tallow-bearing".

    Triadica sebifera

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.