Definitions

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

  • noun An edible, gelatinous, yellowish substance found inside the lower shell of a turtle.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun That part of a turtle which belongs to the lower shield, consisting of a fatty gelatinous substance of a light-yellow color. Also spelled callipee.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun A part of a turtle which is attached to the lower shell. It contains a fatty and gelatinous substance of a light yellowish color, much esteemed as a delicacy.

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

  • noun A food of the yellowish material found inside the lower half of a turtle's carapace (shell).

Etymologies

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

[Possibly alteration of calipash.]

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Examples

  • Dobbin helped him to it; for the lady of the house, before whom the tureen was placed, was so ignorant of the contents, that she was going to help Mr. Sedley without bestowing upon him either calipash or calipee.

    Vanity Fair 2006

  • Even the celebrated Jew himself, when well filled with calipash and calipee, goes contentedly home to tell his money, and expects no more pleasure from his throat during the next twenty-four hours.

    The Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon 2004

  • He would show them the pools under the Mansion House where these creatures luxuriate while awaiting their doom; he would indicate the areas beneath the shell from some of which is extracted the calipash and from some the calipee; he might even induce the Most Worshipful

    Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 156, January 29, 1919 Various

  • Dobbin helped him to it; for the lady of the house, before whom the tureen was placed, was so ignorant of the contents, that she was going to help Mr. Sedley without bestowing upon him either calipash or calipee.

    XXVI. Between London and Chatham 1917

  • Even the celebrated Jew himself, when well filled with calipash and calipee, goes contentedly home to tell his money, and expects no more pleasure from his throat during the next twenty-four hours.

    The Works of Henry Fielding, Volume Six: Miscellanies 1900

  • For in a dirty heap, the sight of which might have pleased an Esquimaux, but was certainly enough to disgust any civilized man, lay the calipee, or under-shell of the turtle, hacked into irregular blocks.

    The Cruise of the Cachalot Round the World After Sperm Whales Frank T. Bullen 1886

  • For while no spectator can deny their claims to a most solemn and superstitious consideration, no more than my firmest resolutions can decline to behold the spectre-tortoise when emerging from its shadowy recess; yet even the tortoise, dark and melancholy as it is upon the back, still possesses a bright side; its calipee or breast-plate being sometimes of a faint yellowish or golden tinge.

    The Piazza Tales Herman Melville 1855

  • Dobbin helped him to it; for the lady of the house, before whom the tureen was placed, was so ignorant of the contents, that she was going to help Mr. Sedley without bestowing upon him either calipash or calipee.

    Vanity Fair William Makepeace Thackeray 1837

  • Even the celebrated Jew himself, when well filled with calipash and calipee, goes contentedly home to tell his money, and expects no more pleasure from his throat during the next twenty-four hours.

    Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon — Volume 1 Henry Fielding 1730

  • The tortise — as the alderman of Bristol, well learned in eating, knows by much experience — besides the delicious calipash and calipee, contains many different kinds of food; nor can the learned reader be ignorant, that in human nature, though here collected under one general name, is such prodigious variety, that a cook will have sooner gone through all the several species of animal and vegetable food in the world, than an author will be able to exhaust so extensive a subject.

    The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling 2004

Comments

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  • The edible, cartilaginous substance attached to a turtle's lower shell.

    August 12, 2008

  • "contains a fatty and gelatinous substance of a light yellowish color, much esteemed as a delicacy"

    Tasty.

    September 26, 2008

  • Citation on calipash.

    November 21, 2008