soufflé

Unadapted borrowing from French soufflé, from souffler (“to puff”).

• (Received Pronunciation) enPR: so͞oʹflā, IPA^(key): /ˈsuːfleɪ/

• Audio (Southern England)

  (file)

• (US) enPR: so͞oflāʹ, IPA^(key): /suːˈfleɪ/

soufflé (countable and uncountable, plural soufflés)

1. A baked dish made from beaten egg whites and various other ingredients.

soufflé (not comparable)

1. (ceramics) Decorated with very small drops or sprinkles of colour, as if blown from a bellows.

soufflé (third-person singular simple present soufflés, present participle souffléing, simple past and past participle souffléed or souffléd)

1. (cooking, transitive) To prepare as a soufflé.
   • 1931, Elizabeth Lucas, Vegetable Cookery, London: William Heinemann Ltd, page 227:

     It is quite possible that the first attempt at souffléing potatoes may be a failure.

   • 1994, Gus Lee, “Rituals”, in Honor and Duty, New York, N.Y.: Borzoi Books, Alfred A. Knopf, →ISBN, page 79:

     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.

   • 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:

     [Phyllis] Richman also criticized a French baby food cookbook that “would have mother spend her time stuffing trout and souffléing oranges for her toddler.”

2. (transitive, figurative, by extension) To treat analogously to the way one prepares a soufflé.
   1. To whirl around or beat violently.
      • 2010, Amy Wiese Forbes, The Satiric Decade, page 180:

        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.

      • 2011, Frank Omar, Me...And the Undead, page 94:

        Case pictured his pasty-faced mother talking her way out of being souffléd alive by pasty-faced nasties.

      • 2017, Jamie Bernthal, Jessica Brick Investigates, page 47:

        Wild thoughts ran through Jessica's mind – had she been kidnapped, abducted, souffléd by Syrians? – before the voices at the front door carried.

      • 2018, T. Edwin Robertson, Wrestler II, page 110:

        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.

      • 2022, Joseph Bruchac, A Year of Moons: Stories From The Adirondack Foothills:

        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.

   2. To give a light, airy, and/or fluffy texture to, especially if done by whipping or blowing.
      • 1963, Vogue - Volume 142, page 17:

        Designed by Shannon Rodgers for Jerry Silverman, in ivory souffléd wool tweed.

      • 1965, Cue: The Weekly Magazine of New York Life, page 14:

        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, Mademoiselle: The Magazine for the Smart Young Woman vol 61, page 36:

        Suddenly faces go beautifully frail (not pale) – with a delicious new kind of makeup: the sheerest fluff of souffléd color-in-creme!

      • 2008, Jancee Dunn, Don't You Forget About Me, page 77:

        She was tall and slim, with short reddish hair souffléd into a bob.

      • 2018, Ling Ma, Severance:

        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.

   3. To make lighthearted, witty, or whimsical.
      • 1912, Book Review Digest, page 366:

        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.

      • 1940, Book-of-the-Month Club News, page 4:

        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?

      • 1958, Briton Hadden, Henry Robinson Luce, Time - Volume 72, page 80:

        The madness is a sort of souffléd Hellzapoppin, of light jolts and quick surprises.

      • 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:

        This period also saw the triumph of the operetta, which satirized and souffléd the tragic love plots of grand opera.

   4. To puff up or bloat.
      • 2014, Carolyn Jess-Cooke, Boom!:

        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.

      • 2020, Nicholas Shakespeare, The Sandpit:

        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.

• IPA^(key): /su.fle/

• Audio

  (file)

soufflé m (plural soufflés)

1. soufflé

soufflé (feminine soufflée, masculine plural soufflés, feminine plural soufflées)

1. past participle of souffler

• “soufflé”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.

Unadapted borrowing from French soufflé.

soufflé m (invariable)

1. soufflé

From French souffler (“to blow”), compare Haitian Creole souf.

soufflé

1. to blow

• Alcée Fortier, Louisiana Folktales

Unadapted borrowing from French soufflé.[1][2]

soufflé m (plural soufflés)

1. Alternative form of suflê