porridge

porridge — noun

1. a thick hot dish of oats cooked with water or milk, often eaten at breakfast, or

1.nounB2
Definition

a thick hot dish of oats cooked with water or milk, often eaten at breakfast, or a similar soft grain or bean dish

Example

On cold mornings, Eva cooks porridge before the children wake.

cook porridge for breakfast

A bowl of porridge kept Noah warm on the train.

pattern: a bowl of porridge

Common collocations
  • hot porridge
  • oat porridge
  • rice porridge
  • breakfast porridge
  • bowl of porridge
Synonyms
  • oatmeal

    especially North American for porridge made from oats

  • congee

    a rice porridge, so it is narrower than porridge in this sense

  • gruel

    usually thinner and often suggests plain or unpleasant food

Grammar Patterns

eat porridge

cook porridge

a bowl of porridge

Usage Note

Usually uncountable. Often used for oat porridge eaten hot at breakfast, but it can also name similar thick dishes made from rice, corn, or beans.

Common Mistakes

I ate a porridge before school.
I ate porridge before school.
Use porridge as an uncountable noun for the food; say a bowl of porridge if you need a countable phrase.

2. time that a person has to live in prison

2.nounC1
Definition

time that a person has to live in prison

Example

Jake did six months' porridge after stealing bikes from the station.

informal British pattern: do porridge

The older boys joked that Max would get porridge again.

pattern: get porridge

Common collocations
  • do porridge
  • get porridge
  • years of porridge
  • more porridge
Synonyms
  • imprisonment

    more formal and used in legal or official writing

  • jail time

    informal, especially in North American English

  • prison time

    a plain modern phrase without the slang tone of porridge

Antonyms
  • freedom

    the state of being out of prison

  • release

    the act of being let out of prison

Grammar Patterns

do porridge

get porridge

years of porridge

Usage Note

Usually appears after verbs like do, get, or mean, or after expressions like years of. Distinguish it from sentence, which names the court's punishment rather than the time inside prison.

Common Mistakes

He got a porridge for robbery.
He got porridge for robbery.
In this slang sense, porridge is usually uncountable.

Synonym discussion

Sense: noun/1

For the food sense, porridge is a broad word for a hot, thick dish made by cooking grains or similar ingredients until soft. Oatmeal is the closest everyday match when the dish is made from oats, especially in North American English. Congee is narrower: it means rice porridge, often in East or Southeast Asian cooking. Gruel is usually thinner than porridge and often sounds negative, suggesting poor or dull food. Cereal is broader in another way, because it can mean dry breakfast flakes as well as cooked grains. Say I had porridge for breakfast for the hot dish, but say We ordered congee when you mean rice porridge specifically.

oatmealcongeegruelcereal ↗

Etymology

LatinOld FrenchMiddle EnglishEnglish

Porridge entered English in the 1500s. It developed from pottage, an older word for food cooked in a pot, and its form was also influenced by related French words for leek soup. Early uses could mean a thick soup, but later the word became the usual name for the hot soft grain dish.