poutine

Meanings

1. A dish consisting of French fries topped with cheese curds and gravy, eaten primarily in Canada.
2. Chiefly with a qualifying word: any of a number of variations on the basic poutine dish.

Etymology

Borrowed from Canadian French poutine (“French fries with cheese curds and gravy; any of various kinds of pudding”); further etymology uncertain, possibly either: * a variant of French pouding (“pudding”), borrowed from English pudding (possibly ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *bʰew- (“to swell”)); or * from a dialectal French word influenced by French pouding or English pudding, though this word has not been identified. The Canadian French word is generally thought to have been coined by the Canadian restaurateur Fernand Lachance (1918–2004) as a name for the dish which is said to have been first served at his restaurant Lutin Qui Rit in Warwick, Quebec, in 1957.