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sherbet

Pronunciation: /ˈʃəːbət/

Translate sherbet | into Italian | into Spanish
Definition of sherbet

noun

  • 1 [mass noun] British a flavoured sweet effervescent powder eaten alone or made into a drink: disks of fruit-flavoured rice paper filled with sherbet
  • 2(especially in Arab countries) a cooling drink of sweet diluted fruit juices: the ladies floated around in diaphanous silks and served sherbet and other refreshments
  • 3North American water ice; sorbet.
  • 4Australian humorous beer: [count noun]:I went down the local pub for a few sherbets

Origin:

early 17th century: from Turkish şerbet, Persian šerbet, from Arabic šarba 'drink', from šariba 'to drink'. Compare with syrup

The tendency to insert an r into the second syllable of sherbet is common: the misspelling sherbert accounts for around a quarter of the citations for the word in the Oxford English Corpus.

sherbet in other Oxford dictionaries

Definition of sherbet in the US English dictionary