Etymology Unadapted borrowing from French soufflé, from souffler (“to puff”).
1
A baked dish made from beaten egg whites and various other ingredients, usually prepared and served in a small earthenware bowl (ramekin).
Setting the soufflés before us, the waitress warns that the ramekins are hot.2025 May 3, Leila Abboud, “Lunch with the FT: Jean-Luc Mélenchon”, in FT Weekend (Life & Arts section), London: The Financial Times Ltd., →ISSN, →OCLC, page 3:
Etymology Unadapted borrowing from French soufflé, from souffler (“to puff”).
1
Ceramics, Chemistry, Engineering, Natural sciences, Physical sciences Decorated with very small drops or sprinkles of colour, as if blown from a bellows.
soufflé
verb
Etymology Unadapted borrowing from French soufflé, from souffler (“to puff”).
It is quite possible that the first attempt at souffléing potatoes may be a failure.1931, Elizabeth Lucas, Vegetable Cookery, London: William Heinemann Ltd, page 227:
Our lockers were on the floor, gear intermixed in heaps, as if King Kong had souffléed the room with an eggbeater the size of the Eiffel Tower.1994, Gus Lee, “Rituals”, in Honor and Duty, New York, N.Y.: Borzoi Books, Alfred A. Knopf, →ISBN, page 79:
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[Phyllis] Richman also criticized a French baby food cookbook that “would have mother spend her time stuffing trout and souffléing oranges for her toddler.”2014, Amy Bentley, “Natural Food, Natural Motherhood, and the Turn toward Homemade: The 1970s to the 1990s”, in Inventing Baby Food: Taste, Health, and the Industrialization of the American Diet (California Studies in Food and Culture; 51), Oakland, Calif.: University of California Press, →ISBN, page 112:
› To treat analogously to the way one prepares…
2
Broadly, Figuratively To whirl around or beat violently.
The July Revolution's promises have been fricasseed, liberties ground into salamis, the budget souffléd, republicans put up as marmalade, public order fried, politesse burned, and glory boiled.2010, Amy Wiese Forbes, The Satiric Decade, page 180:
Case pictured his pasty-faced mother talking her way out of being souffléd alive by pasty-faced nasties.2011, Frank Omar, Me...And the Undead, page 94:
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Wild thoughts ran through Jessica's mind – had she been kidnapped, abducted, souffléd by Syrians? – before the voices at the front door carried.2017, Jamie Bernthal, Jessica Brick Investigates, page 47:
Donovan looked for a place to throw Ivan and Ivan could sense this, but he wasn't excited about getting souffléd onto a wooden floor.2018, T. Edwin Robertson, Wrestler II, page 110:
But it is hard not to smile when you are having fun, including while you are in midair a er being body-locked, halfway through the process of being suplexed (more like souffléd in my case) by an extremely competent opponent twenty years younger and twenty pounds heavier.2022, Joseph Bruchac, A Year of Moons: Stories From The Adirondack Foothills:
3
Broadly, Figuratively To give a light, airy, and/or fluffy texture to, especially if done by whipping or blowing.
Designed by Shannon Rodgers for Jerry Silverman, in ivory souffléd wool tweed.1963, Vogue - Volume 142, page 17:
The fabrics — some 25,000 yards of them — form an extraordinary collection, ranging from 69¢ domestic cottons to souffléd mohairs, Hong Kong silks and haute couture fabrics from the Rue de la Paix .1965, Cue: The Weekly Magazine of New York Life, page 14:
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Suddenly faces go beautifully frail (not pale) – with a delicious new kind of makeup: the sheerest fluff of souffléd color-in-creme!1965, Mademoiselle: The Magazine for the Smart Young Woman vol 61, page 36:
She was tall and slim, with short reddish hair souffléd into a bob.2008, Jancee Dunn, Don't You Forget About Me, page 77:
At floor height, I see people I recognize, but it takes a moment because they are all dressed in formal evening wear, their makeup done, their permed hair souffléd into intricate styles.2018, Ling Ma, Severance:
4
Broadly, Figuratively To make lighthearted, witty, or whimsical.
Feeling that he must bring his subject down to the level of a layman's comprehension, the author has outdone himself in preparing a style picturesque and souffléd enough to do the trick requested.1912, Book Review Digest, page 366:
And if you want to meditate on social significances, ask yourself what America would be like if our natural Angloid heaviness of temper had not been fermented and souffléd by such diverse racial strains?1940, Book-of-the-Month Club News, page 4:
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The madness is a sort of souffléd Hellzapoppin, of light jolts and quick surprises.1958, Briton Hadden, Henry Robinson Luce, Time - Volume 72, page 80:
This period also saw the triumph of the operetta, which satirized and souffléd the tragic love plots of grand opera.1998, Sally Banes, “The Romantic Ballet”, in Dancing Women: Female Bodies on Stage, London; New York, N.Y.: Routledge, →ISBN, section “Coppélia and the “decline” of French nineteenth-century ballet”, page 36:
Not a rite-of-passage rash-and-fever, not a week eating ice cream on the sofa, this was not chickenpox but a biblical plague the month before he turned two, his skinny frame covered entire with pennysized bulbs sagging, fat with neon green pus, as though he had been mummified in bubble wrap, victim of the world's bees, skin around the pustules souffléd with red welts, coat of monstrous nipples.2014, Carolyn Jess-Cooke, Boom!:
The long polished table like the deck of his uncle Hugo's yacht, the partridge with bread sauce, the club claret, the white heads in black tie, the souffléd features of accountants, lawyers, civil servants, bankers, teachers, all scrambling to recall each other's nicknames for the chance to voice them once again.2020, Nicholas Shakespeare, The Sandpit: