In article
>,
" > wrote:

> I find North American English, with its propensity for inverting
> syntactically sound expressions and creating verbs out of sows' ears
> (to Christmas shop, to grocery shop, etc.), has produced some rather
> unappetizing terms for food usually as some sort of abbreviation. A
> few came up recently and I thought I'd start a thread on this, as a
> form of recreation (because this is after all a rec.* newsgroup).
>
> NOTE: I specifically said North American as this aberration can also
> be found in parts of Canada.
>
> So here are a few:
>
> "from scratch", or worse "scratch" (as in "scratch cake"...oy, the
> mental image of cake made from flaky dead skin or dandruff)
>
> "tub" as in "tub of margarine" or yogurt, or worse "tub butter". What
> the hell is "tub butter" and who would want any? The word "tub"
> conjures up the idea of a large receptacle in which people bathe and
> lose their dead skin, floating in soapy water...again with the dead
> skin image.
>
> "tablespread" or the use of "spread" to mean a soft substance...I'm
> not even going there.

I favor adding "poutine" to the list.

Of course, there are the phrases that *aren't* used, like "dead cow
meat". That's actually a perfectly correct phrase to describe a beef
steak, but it doesn't sound very good. How about "dead pig meat"? I'm
getting boring here.

My brother went to a very fancy dinner in China. Since my brother was
the only guest who didn't know chinese, he got a special menu in
English. You didn't get to choose off the menu, it was all arranged in
advance, ten courses in all. The English words were all correct, but
not the ones expected. Two of the course were described simply as "pig
intestines". Well, that's what they were. Another was "chicken feet".
After ten courses, my brother left there still hungry.

--
Dan Abel
Petaluma, California USA