Meaning & use
sowbelly
Last updated
UK/ˈsaʊbeli/
US/ˈsaʊbeli/
Meaning
noununcountableold-fashioned
Salted pork fat from the belly of a pig, used as cheap food and a flavoring, especially by early American settlers and soldiers.
Grammar: Uncountable: a slab of sowbelly, not a sowbelly.
Patterns
- a slab of sowbelly
The cowboys cooked beans with a slab of sowbelly.
Soldiers lived on hardtack and sowbelly during the long march.
The old cookbook lists sowbelly as a pantry staple.
Common combinations
- salted sowbelly
- The camp cook kept barrels of salted sowbelly.
- beans and sowbelly
- Supper was beans and sowbelly again.
- slab of sowbelly
- He sliced a slab of sowbelly for the pan.
- fried sowbelly
- Fried sowbelly made the breakfast greasy but filling.
Synonyms and how they differ
- salt pork
- Is the usual modern term for the same cured meat, and sounds less rustic.
- fatback
- Is cured fat from the pig's back, while sowbelly comes from the belly.
- bacon
- Is also from the belly but is usually smoked and sliced thin.
Word family
Commonly confused: sowbelly or sow?
sowbelly vs sow
Sow can mean to plant seeds, said like so, or an adult female pig, said to rhyme with cow.
Practice
What is sowbelly?
Choose one answer.
Sowbelly is cured pork belly fat, a cheap staple of frontier food. The other options are different foods.
Make it your own
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