parboil
/ˈpɑːr.bɔɪl/verb
parboil is a verb meaning “To boil food briefly so that it is partly cooked” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled P-A-R-B-O-I-L and has 2 syllables, and it appears about once in every 44 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data).
What does parboil mean?
verb
- 1
To boil food briefly so that it is partly cooked.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How do you pronounce parboil?
- UK /ˈpɑː.bɔɪl/
- US /ˈpɑːr.bɔɪl/
Parboil has 2 syllables (counted from its American pronunciation in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: LL-Q1860_(eng)-Vealhurl-parboil.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Forms of parboil
- parboils present, singular, he/she/it
- parboiling participle, present
- parboiled participle, past
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is parboil?
Parboil appears about once in every 44 million words in written English, the 204,233rd most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Parboil in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense partially boil:
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| French | blanchir |
| German | blanchieren, ankochen |
| Portuguese | parboilizar |
| Spanish | sancochar, parboilizar, parboilear |
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.
Where does parboil come from?
From Middle English parboyle, from Old French parbouillir (“to boil thoroughly”), from Medieval Latin perbulliō, from Latin per (“thoroughly”) + bulliō (“to boil”). Sense “to boil partially” (c.1440), rather than original “to boil thoroughly” is by corruption: associating the prefix with part (from Latin pars (“part”)) rather than per.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).