Definitions

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

  • noun A Mexican dish made of chopped meat and crushed peppers, highly seasoned, wrapped in cornhusks spread with masa, and steamed.

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

  • noun A Mexican dish made of crushed corn (cornmeal) mixed with minced meat, seasoned with red pepper, dipped in oil, and steamed.

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

  • noun Mexican dish of cornmeal dough shell filled with various ingredients (e.g. chopped beef, pork, sweet filling) then steamed in corn husks.

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

  • noun corn and cornmeal dough stuffed with a meat mixture then wrapped in corn husks and steamed
  • noun a city in northern Ghana

Etymologies

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

[From American Spanish tamales, pl. of tamal, tamale, from Nahuatl tamalli.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Back-formation from plural tamales, from Spanish tamales, plural of tamal, from Nahuatl tamalli ("wrapped").

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Examples

Comments

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  • ♪♫ Hot tamales and they're red hot! Yes, she's got 'em for sale... ♫♪ (Robert Johnson)

    November 24, 2009

  • Robert Johnson: King of the Mississippi Delta Blues

    November 24, 2009