- a dish of meat and/or vegetables cooked slowly in liquid in a container that has a lid (= cover)
- beef stew and dumplings
- I'm making a stew for lunch.
Oxford Collocations DictionaryStew is used after these nouns:- beef
- fish
- lamb
- …
Word OriginMiddle English (in the sense ‘cauldron’): from Old French estuve (related to estuver ‘heat in steam’), probably based on Greek tuphos ‘smoke, steam’. The noun sense (mid 18th cent.) is directly from the verb (dating from late Middle English).Definitions on the go
Look up any word in the dictionary offline, anytime, anywhere with the Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary app.
Idioms
See stew in the Oxford Advanced American Dictionaryget (yourself)/be in a stew (about/over something)
- (informal) to become/feel very anxious or upset about something
- There’s no point getting in a stew about it.
Check pronunciation:
stew