FoodBanter.com - View Single Post - Unappetizing food language in North American English

PeterLucas[_5_]

" > wrote in news:7bfa283c-02a8-
:

> 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)

Scratch conjures up a different image for me....... a soldiers
breakfast...... a scratch, a fart, and a look around.

>
> "tub" as in "tub of margarine" or yogurt, or worse "tub butter". What
> the hell is "tub butter" and who would want any?

How about a 'knob' of butter.

And who would shape their butter to resemble a knob?

Hmmmmm..... sudden images of "Last Tango in Paris"

> 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.

You have this thnd about dead skin, don't you??? :-)

>
> "tablespread" or the use of "spread" to mean a soft substance...I'm
> not even going there.
>
>

Spread 'em :-)

--
Peter Lucas
Brisbane
Australia

Mi b'aill docha basaich air m' ris, sin mair air m'glun.

(I'd rather die on my feet, than live on my knees.)