gumbo

From Bantu ngombo, kingombo (“okra plant”), possibly via Gullah.[1][2] Cognate to Portuguese quiabo, Caribbean Spanish guingambó, and cognates in other Romance languages.

• Rhymes: -ʌmbəʊ

gumbo (countable and uncountable, plural gumbos)

1. (countable) Synonym of okra: the plant or its edible capsules.
2. (uncountable) A soup or stew made with okra.
3. (uncountable) A fine silty soil that when wet becomes very thick and heavy.
   • 1909, Ralph Connor, The Foreigner, ch. 11:

     The team stuck fast in the black muck, and every effort to extricate them served only to imbed them more hopelessly in the sticky gumbo.

   • 1914 April, "Making Good Roads by Firing Poor Ones," Popular Mechanics, p. 567:

     There are no poorer roads in all the United States than the "gumbo" roads of the south—gumbo being the name give a certain kind of mud or clay that is particularly sticky, clings tenaciously, seems to have no bottom, and will not support any weight.

   • 1950 July 3, "Labor: Trouble at Lowland," Time:

     The red gumbo soil uttered ugly sucking sounds at the touch of a man's boot.

gumbo

1.  (anatomy) foot