tempurá

See also: tempura and tempurą

Portuguese

Alternative forms

• tempura (Portugal)

Etymology

Borrowed from Japanese 天麩羅 (てんぷら, tenpura), from Portuguese, ultimately from Latin. Different dictionaries link two different original terms:

• Portuguese tempero (“seasoning”) or tempera (“he/she/it seasons; season!”), third-person present singular or imperative tense of temperar (“to season, to temper”), from Latin temperāre (“to mix, to temper”).
• Portuguese têmpora (“Ember days”), from Latin tempora, plural of tempus (“time; period”). When Portuguese explorers (mostly Jesuit missionaries) arrived in Japan, they abstained from eating beef, pork, and poultry during the Ember days series of holidays. Instead, they ate fried vegetables and fish. This was the first contact of the Japanese with fried food, and since then they began associating the Portuguese word têmpora (which they pronounced tenpura) with such food.

Pronunciation

• (Brazil) IPA^(key): /tẽ.puˈɾa/

• (Portugal) IPA^(key): /tẽ.puˈɾa/

• Rhymes: -a
• Hyphenation: tem‧pu‧rá

Noun

tempurá m (uncountable) (Brazilian spelling)

1. tempura (dish of deep-fried food)

Quotations

For quotations using this term, see Citations:tempurá.