Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun Cold cooked rice dressed with vinegar that is shaped into pieces and topped with raw or cooked fish, or formed into a roll with fish, egg, or vegetables and often wrapped in seaweed.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun proscribed A dish, based on Japanese cuisine, the chief ingredient of which is raw fish; sashimi.
  • noun A Japanese dish made of small portions of sticky white rice flavoured with vinegar, usually wrapped in seaweed and filled or topped with vegetables or sashimi.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun rice (with raw fish) wrapped in seaweed

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Japanese.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Japanese , , 寿司, すし (sushi, originally refers なれずし (narezushi, "rice fermented with raw fish"), later refers 江戸前寿司 (edomae-zushi, "raw fish and rice flavored with rice vinegar")), from すしめし (sushimeshi, "sour rice").

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Examples

Comments

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  • For interesting conversation, see ostrich fern.

    October 21, 2007

  • Sushi @ Wikipedia (Spanish)

    October 22, 2007

  • The only thing you need to remember is that sushi is not a raw fish. Sushi means vinegared rice. June 18th was purported as being National Sushi Day, even though no one had ever heard of it before. It seems to be one of those internet holidays, made up by marketing departments to get people to buy stuff – it's not as if that isn't a distinct possibility. Most people who have written about it so far have all pointed out that they had never heard of National Sushi Day, and that it is probably spurious. At any rate, those who go for it might file into Japanese restaurants and get in on celebrating the suspicious National Sushi Day.

    June 22, 2009

  • True, and many varieties of what we know as "sushi" are not even raw.

    June 22, 2009

  • archetypal sushi

    June 23, 2009

  • "Alice Mabel Bacon, who spent much time in Japan, introduced the word "sushi" into the English language in 1893, in her book A Japanese Interior. It is doubtful that this sushi, which she described as "rice sandwiches," was made with fish. We do know that the "sushi" included on the menu of a Japanese dinner in the fall of 1894 at the Club of All Nations in Manhattan was not. Almost 30 years later, in the spring of 1924, "sushi" was served on the lawn of the Vanderlip estate, in Scarborough-on-Hudson, at a fund-raising event for a women's college in Tokyo, but it is almost certain that no raw fish was involved. All these early references to sushi are likely to variations of the simple treats of sweet sushi rice wrapped in seaweed or in little soybean cakes that were so popular among Japanese children. Source & citation.

    September 30, 2011

  • Miss Bacon was later admitted to an upscale New York clinic, suffering from fulgurant fugu addiction. It is not known whether or not she was ever cured.

    Guffaws childishly, slapping thighs in simulated mirth.

    September 30, 2011

  • *Slaps thews in genuine mirth.*

    September 30, 2011