marmite

See also: Marmite

English

Seventeenth century earthenware marmite in the Louvre

A more recent cast-iron marmite without its own tripod legs

Etymology

From French marmite.

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈmɑːˌmaɪt/

• Audio (Southern England)

  (file)

• (General American) IPA^(key): /ˈmɑɹˌmaɪt/

Noun

marmite (countable and uncountable, plural marmites)

1. (countable) A rounded cooking pot of various designs, commonly pot-bellied, with or without tripod, handles, lid etc; originally earthenware but currently more commonly of cast iron or other metals.
   • 1824 Thomas Gill. The Technical Repository p. 180: XXXV: On the French Marmite, or Pot-au-Feu: and on preparing Bouillon with it

     My little boy having been ill of a fever for forty days, I have learned from his attendant how to make the celebrated soup (bouillon) of Paris: and finding it to be superior to any that I ever before tasted, I take the liberty to send you the directions necessary to enable any one to prepare this cheap and desirable food.
     Earthen-pots with covers, made to hold from one to seven pounds of meat, are found in every family. The marmite bought for me was for one-and-a-half pound only: this quantity of lean meat (bœufmaigre), was always part of the leg or shoulder: it was put into the marmite, which was then filled up with cold water, about five pints, and placed on the hearth, close to the wood-fire; and when it began to simmer or boil gently, it threw up a scum, which was carefully taken off from time to time with a spoon, for the space of threequarters of an hour, which perfectly cleansed the meat and water from every impurity.

2. (uncountable) Alternative letter-case form of Marmite.
   • c. 1910, Mrs. Eustace Miles, “Meatless Soups”, in Every Woman’s Encyclopædia, volume III, London, page 1852:

     Required: […] One tablespoonful of nutril or one small teaspoonful of marmite.

   • 1912, Laura L. Ulrich, Good Food: How to Prepare It, Warburton, Vic.: Signs Publishing Company, page 61:

     Stir a spoonful of marmite into some brown gravy, and pour over the potatoes, etc.

   • 1935, Harry Roberts, editor, Everyman in Health and in Sickness, London: w:J. M. Dent and Sons Ltd., page 288:

     A teaspoonful of marmite, a dessertspoonful of a good brand of cod-liver oil, and two glasses of water between meals, would make the diet complete.

   • 1939, Annual Report on the Health and Medical Services of the State of Queensland for the Year 1938-39, Brisbane, Qld.: […] Thomas Gilbert Hope, […], page 132:

     A spoonful of marmite added to soups and gravies after they are cooked improves their flavour.

   • 1945, Wilfrid Sheldon, Diseases of Infancy and Childhood, 4th edition, London: J. & A. Churchill Ltd, page 439:

     The treatment of this particular form of anæmia lies in giving vitamin B, a suitable preparation being a teaspoonful of marmite three times a day, together with desiccated gastric mucosa.

   • 1953, Russell Braddon, The Naked Island, Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday & Company, Inc., →LCCN, page 211:

     I crawled up and retrieved it and, wiping it clean on some leaves, looked at the label. “Marmite,” it read. / “You have beriberi,” he shouted. / “I know,” I replied from the mud. / “Take a spoonful of that a day,” he advised. / “Will it do any good?” / “Might,” he replied, and, returning firmly inside the palisade of the headquarters camp, indicated that the subject was closed. I crawled back to our camp, where I found the guards very cross that I had eluded them. I took a spoonful of marmite and, exhausted, fell asleep.

     The 1952 edition uses Marmite.

   • 1984, Dorothy Hammond Innes, “[The Months] January”, in Home Is My Garden, London: Harvill Press, →ISBN, page 30:

     Only a strong man can cut through the rind, but the inside, firm and juicy, we slice with onion, potato, carrot, parsnip – whatever there is – simmer till tender, then put through the liquidizer, bring to the consistency of cream with stock or milk, add nutmeg or mace as well as pepper and salt; if no stock, I add a spoonful of marmite, and always top of milk or a little cream.

   • 1991, John Wilson, Catch Tench (The w:Angling Times Library), London: Boxtree, published 1994, →ISBN, page 77:

     Finely grated cheddar cheese used 50/50 with bread paste, plus a spoonful of marmite, makes a fabulous tangy bait; it can be fozen^[sic] and used at any time. Alternatively, try sausage-meat, again used 50/50 with bread paste, with additives like marmite, bovril or a crushed oxo cube kneaded in.

   • 1991, Brother Ramon, Heaven on Earth: A Personal Retreat Guide, London: Marshall Pickering, →ISBN, page 58:

     1 pint stock - made by adding a generous spoon of marmite to boiling water

   • 2001, Katie Bowes, “The Night Is…”, in Lucy Jeacock, editor, Poetic Voyages: Bristol, volume II, Peterborough, Cambs.: Young Writers, published 2002, →ISBN:

     The night is a spoonful of marmite being spread over the planets.

   • 2008 August 12, Luca Moretti, “The ontological status of minimal entities”, in Philosophical Studies, volume 141, number 1, →DOI:

     More informally: vegemite and marmite share some property.

Anagrams

• metiram

French

Etymology

In Middle French (attested 1388) used in the sense of an earthen or metal cooking-pot; later (17th century) also of bombs or grenades from their resemblance to iron cooking-pots. Earlier, the noun Old French marmite meant "hypocrite" (attested 1223); the semantic development is explained as the cooking-pot being covered and not revealing its interior (thus being "hypocritical", as compared to e.g. a cooking-pan or a plate).

The etymology of marmite "hypocrite" is explained as a compound of marmotter (“to mutter”) (from an onomatopoeic base mar- "murmur") and mite (“cat”) (an obsolete word for "cat", probably also onomatopoeic, i.e. imitative of meowing, extant only in the compound chattemite), and thus describing a person being evasive by "murmuring" or "meowing" instead of speaking plainly.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /maʁ.mit/

• Audio

  (file)

Noun

marmite f (plural marmites)

1. pot, cooking pot, marmite [1388]
2. (metonymically) meal prepared in a cooking pot
3. (military, slang) (heavy) shell [1637]
4. (dated, slang) prostitute, especially one past the first youth, the "flesh pot" of the souteneur [1841]

Derived terms

• faire bouillir la marmite

Descendants

• → Catalan: marmita
• → English: marmite
• → Portuguese: marmita
• → Spanish: marmita

Further reading

• “marmite”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.

Paronyms

• mammite