Words for Food Contain Strange Ingredients by Rob Kyff on Creators.com

Recently

Put a Sock in It! Sometimes you put your foot(wear) in your mouth. Let's look at the origins of some "soxy" and "sole"ful terms. — Blue stocking Oddly enough, this derogatory term for an intellectual woman derives from an intellectual man. …Read more. Cue up a Queue of Tricky Phrases Verbs followed by prepositions can be tricky. Can you select the correct verb in each phrase? 1. At dawn, the band's fans started to (cue up, queue up) for tickets. 2. The danger of infection (militates against, mitigates against) extensive surgery.… …Read more. Let Us Now Pronounce Famous Men Q: What's the proper way to pronounce "Carnegie"? I am from Pittsburgh, where the guy lived for many years and had a university named for him — Carnegie Mellon. We pronounce it "kahr-NEG-ee" in these parts of the woods. I …Read more. Getting Our Kilter Back in Whack Why do we say something is "out of kilter" or "out of whack"? Has something ever been "in kilter" or "in whack"? I first heard the term "out of kilter" as a kid while watching my father build a …Read more.

Words for Food Contain Strange Ingredients

Did you know that there's a hatchet in your hash, a spear in your garlic and a thread in your fillet?

Diner: "Waiter, there's a thread in my fillet!"

Waiter: "Sew?"

It's hard to imagine someone using a battle-axe to make hash — "Hold that potato steady; this time I'll try to come within a foot of the darn thing!" — but "hash" ultimately derives from the French "hache" (battle-ax).

The diminutive form of "hache" — "hatchette" (small ax) — became "hatchet" in English. The verb form of "hache" was "hacher" (to chop), so food, such as meat and potatoes, that was chopped into small pieces came to be called "hash" in English.

Back in the Middle Ages, someone — perhaps the same guy who was using a battle-ax to make hash — thought that a stalk of garlic resembled a leek shaped like a spear. So the Old English word for this herb with the pungent bulbs evolved as "garleac," literally "spear" (gar) "leek" (leac).

"Gar," by the way, is also the root of our verb "gore," meaning "to spear" or, alternately, "to scare the heck out of everyone with predictions of global warming."

As for that thread in the fillet, it derives from the French "filet" (little thread), which in turn came from the Latin "filium" (thread).

So when the English needed a term for a boneless roast tied up with a string, they proclaimed, "Voilà! — ‘fillet.'"

(And when the English needed a name for a musical instrument with strings, they proclaimed, "Voilà! — ‘viola.'")

The labels on other foods list some surprising linguistic ingredients. There's moss in your "mushrooms," for instance. The French first cultivated these fungi on beds of "mousse" (moss), so they were called "mousseron," which became "mushroom" in English. And the Romans nailed down the name "clove" because they thought this spice bud looked like a nail ("clovus" in Latin).

We're accustomed to seeing faces carved on pumpkins. But did you know there's a countenance on your coconut?

Some people, who were probably drinking too many piña coladas, thought that the three holes on the bottom of a coconut resembled a human face. The word for a grimace or a grimacing face in Spanish and Portuguese is "coco," so a nut with such a face was dubbed a "coconut."

Rob Kyff, a teacher and writer in West Hartford, Conn., invites your language sightings. Send your reports of misuse and abuse, as well as examples of good writing, via e-mail to Wordguy@aol.com or by regular mail to Rob Kyff, Creators Syndicate, 5777 W. Century Blvd., Suite 700, Los Angeles, CA 90045. To find out more about Rob Kyff and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com. COPYRIGHT 2009 CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.