Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun A traditional Chinese cuisine in which small portions of a variety of foods, including an assortment of steamed or fried dumplings, are served in succession.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun A
Cantonese -style meal traditionally eaten in late morning or early afternoon comprising tea and food typically placed in small steamer baskets or on small plates and often served from carts that move around from table to table in a restaurant. - noun The food served at a dim sum meal, typically including
dumplings ,seafood anddesserts .
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun traditional Chinese cuisine; a variety of foods (including several kinds of steamed or fried dumplings) are served successively in small portions
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
[Cantonese dim2 sam1, light refreshments (equivalent to Mandarin diǎnxīn), from Middle Chinese tiam´ sim : tiam´, dot, point, spot + sim, heart, mind (from Proto-Sino-Tibetan *sam, *sem; akin to Tibetan sem(s), to think).]
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
From Cantonese 點心 (dim2 sam1), Mandarin pinyin: diǎnxin/diǎnxīn). The derivation is unclear. 點 means "dot, point" and 心 means "heart" leading many to translate this "dim sum" as “touch the heart” or “dotted heart.”
Support
Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word dim sum.
Examples
Sorry, no example sentences found.
oroboros commented on the word dim sum
Faint total?
March 28, 2010