boulet

Boulet is a French noun with several related meanings. In its core sense, it designates a ball or spherical object, historically used for projectiles such as a cannonball (un boulet de canon). The term can also appear in broader military or historical contexts to refer to heavy, rounded masses.

In culinary usage, particularly in Belgium and certain Francophone regions, boulet refers to a meatball made from ground meat (often pork or beef) that is seasoned and shaped into a compact ball. A well-known regional variant is boulets à la Liégeoise, which is typically served with onion gravy and fries.

Figuratively, boulet can describe something burdensome or troublesome. For example, in everyday speech, an obstacle, liability, or heavy burden can be referred to as a boulet, conveying the sense of weight or nuisance it imposes.

Boulet is also used as a surname and as a pseudonym in culture. As a surname, it is borne by several individuals in French-speaking communities. In popular culture, the name Boulet is used as a pen name by a French-Canadian cartoonist, among other uses.

Overall, boulet spans culinary, historical, and figurative domains, retaining the central idea of a weighty, rounded object and expanding into regional dishes and metaphorical language.