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mashed potato

noun

Simple meaning

A dish made up of potatoes that have been boiled, mashed to a pulpy consistency, and mixed with such ingredients as butter or milk.

Pronunciation

Say it like this:

mashtpuhtaytoh

Say the bold part a little louder.

US device voice
IPA pronunciation (US)

ˈmæʃtpəteɪtoʊ

This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.

IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.

Word Review

Definition

Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.

noun

  1. usually uncountable

    A dish consisting of potatoes that have been boiled, mashed to a pulpy consistency, and mixed with such ingredients as butter or milk.

  2. Potato that has been peeled and boiled and then mashed

  3. countable

    A dance or a dance move popular in Western culture the 1960s.

  4. Alternative letter-case form of mashed potato ("1960s dance").

Word Aura™

How this word commonly comes across.

Aura for this meaning

This meaning: A dish consisting of potatoes that have been boiled, mashed to a pulpy consistency, and mixed with such ingredients as butter or milk.

Used this way, mashed potato is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It usually sounds natural in a wide range of settings.

Emotional tone
Neutral
Formality
Neutral
Intensity
Moderate
How common
Moderately common
Connotation
Matter-of-fact
Usage feel
Neutral and straightforward

Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.

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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.