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mayonnaise

nounverbattested in dialogue

  • United Kingdom//ˈmeɪ.ə.neɪz//
  • United States//ˌmeɪ.əˈneɪz//
  • //ˈmæn.eɪz//
  • /[ˈmɛən-]/

A dressing made from vegetable oil, raw egg yolks, vinegar or lemon juice, and seasoning, used on salads, with french fries, in sandwiches etc.

noun

  1. 1

    A dressing made from vegetable oil, raw egg yolks, vinegar or lemon juice, and seasoning, used on salads, with french fries, in sandwiches etc.

    There are 250 foods, including mayonnaise, cheese and cocoa, that don't list ingredients at all.

    The FDA's original intent for foods included under "standards of identity" ensured that terms like "mayonnaise" or "ice cream” would guarantee the same basic ingredients required in the government-established recipe no matter who manufactured it.

    I grew up thinking that the blue and white Miracle Whip salad dressing jar in the fridge held the same substance the rest of the world knew as mayonnaise. / Now I know that mayonnaise is something entirely different.

    The oils in store-bought mayonnaise range from olive oil to sunflower oil to safflower oil and some less desirable oils!

  2. 2

    Any cold dish with that dressing as an ingredient.

    We served a lobster mayonnaise as a starter.

  3. 3

    Any cream, for example for moisturizing the face or conditioning the hair, for which the base is egg yolks and oil.

    hair mayonnaise

    facial mayonnaise

    They include cider vinegar, two pre-shampoo products, shampoo, conditioner, hair mayonnaise, oil, leave-in conditioner, end protector, revitalising styling spray and filtered water.

    Then I implemented a lighter protein conditioner – such as hair mayonnaise, which I learned about from my cousin Renee – for the off weeks. I used this hidden gem in combination with olive oil (yes, I bought a kitchen bottle of olive oil – the same kind my grandmother used in every single delicious dish she ever cooked – strictly for use in my hair).

  4. 4

    informalExaggeration.

    Rancey and our coach, Damien Hardwick, still both joke that "Dimma" tried to off-load him for a sixpack of beers and a bucket of chips in his first few years, but I think they both put some mayonnaise on the story these days.

    If he had a reputation among supporters of playing for free kicks he wasn't aware of it and no one from the AFL or coaches spoke to him specifically about changing his style. But he admits, he would "put some mayonnaise" on top of what defenders had done to him to ensure the umpires were aware of what was happening.

Etymology

Unadapted borrowing from French mayonnaise, possibly named after the city of Maó (Mahón in Spanish), Minorca, whence the recipe was brought back to France. Compare Spanish mahonesa. Alternative suggested origins include the city of Bayonne (bayonnaise); the Duke of Mayenne and the words manier (“to handle”) in French or moyeu (“eye yolk”) in Old French.

verb

  1. 1

    To cover or season with mayonnaise.

    Jones himself presided in the kitchen, mincing truffles, mayonnaising lobster, booting waiters out the door with tray after tray of steaming savories and teeth-numbing sweets, […]

    I thought of mayonnaising her racket handle or substituting it for sunblock, but decided against it.

Forms

plural
mayonnaises
past tense
mayonnaised
past participle
mayonnaised
present participle
mayonnaising
third person singular
mayonnaises
The neighbouring pagesAlphabetical order follows the rules of the language, not byte values: an accent decides only between two otherwise identical words, and Spanish files Ñ as a letter of its own.

Lexical content from Wiktionary, under CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source entry · Data version 2026-08-23

Rank among the words of the OpenSubtitles 2018 corpus — film and television subtitles, so spoken rather than written usage (CC BY-SA 3.0).