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Definition of "lagniappe" []

  • Chiefly Southern Louisiana & Mississippi A small gift presented by a storeowner to a customer with the customer's purchase. (noun)
  • Chiefly Southern Louisiana & Mississippi An extra or unexpected gift or benefit. Also called regionally boot2. See Regional Note at beignet. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Use "lagniappe" in a sentence
  • "NEW ORLEANS — In these parts, they refer to it as lagniappe, a Cajun word that roughly translated means “a little bit extra.”"
  • ""What we call a lagniappe, a little somethin 'extra."
  • "It is the unearnable gift, the divine reversal and sacred surprise, the still small voice that drowns out the din of the maddening crowd, the little bit extra that my Cajun friends call lagniappe, the very thing we "deserve" the least but get anyway."