I'm watching this, and I am like, "Geez, Rob, and Jess get so excited over seemly small things like lunch is to lump as bunch is to bump." Then realize I've watched every episode so far and love every minute. Am I, am I....an etymology nerd?
Not all Spanish speaking countries call pineapple "ananás"; some call it "piña", which comes from "piñón", which is the word for pine cone in Spanish. Also, in Spanish, we kept a lot closer to the Nahuatl pronunciation of avocado: from "ahuacatl", we went to "aguacate", and in Spanish, the word for lawyer, "abogado", does not really sound like "aguacate".
The English word for it definitely came from the Spanish word "abogado" (or that word misheard). Whether the Spanish-speaking person who introduced it was making a lawyer joke is up for debate :)
Adding to the "dinner vs. supper" commentary: I worked at a nursing facility in southern Appalachia. Due to the variety of backgrounds of the residents, who had varying meal words, some of the staff said "noon meal" and "evening meal" to survive the arguments.
I’m french. In the 1950s and 1960s, dîner was the midday meal (around noon-1pm) and souper was the evening meal (around 7-8pm). It is still the case in Belgium and Québec. Then the french TV spread the Parisian way of naming meals. So the midday meal became déjeuner, and the evening one became dîner.
Wow, what a revelatory episode! In all my years of writing and editing, I've never taken a deep dive into the etymology of food words. And, thanks to you two, I have a refreshed appreciation for vanilla. ;-)
I grew up in southern Georgia of the US, coming into my wits in the mid-1950s, and everyone I knew called the midday meal dinner. Our meals were breakfast, dinner, and supper. This caused me some trouble twice down the years when I arranged to meet someone for dinner and they assumed I meant the evening meal. I love this channel!
That's a perfectly normal thing up here in Québec. Over here, breakfast = déjeuner dinner = dîner supper = souper It's been that way for a *very* long time and it ain't about to change :)
We always had Breakfast, Lunch and Tea Except on Sunday when we had dinner in the middle of the day! It's something of an anomaly because Sunday dinner was generally not a lot different from the Tea that we had the rest of the week!
we have the same issue here in the UK but as long as you know who you're talking to or you can guess from the way they speak then it's rarely too much of an issue and you just ask for clarification without trying to sound snobby. Sunday dinner is another thing all together and you have to ask. I grew up having dinner at midday and Sunday dinner at 18:00 which makes no sense in terms of the use of 'dinner'. 18:00 meals the rest of the week were 'tea' and usually 'your tea'. I wouldn't use that myself now because it makes me feel like I'm 5 years old.
This may have more to do with my own dining habits, but now that I think about it, what I call "dinner" is the largest meal of the day, but it can be any time after noon; if I call a meal "supper," though, it's always in the evening. The variations are interesting! - Jess
Growing up in Edinburgh in the 1960s, the sequence of meals was: 8 am breakfast, 11 am elevenses, 1pm dinner, 3 pm afternoon tea, 5.30pm high tea, 7pm supper. In those days, my father, who worked in an insurance office in the middle of town, would come home for lunch and it was expected that high tea would be ready to be served immediately when he got home from the office in the evening. Dinner was the biggest meal of the day with three courses.
Wow, great insight into life. Thanks for sharing. Did everyone always eat together if they were at home for these meals? Seems people would be more connected to each other if they did.
Growing up in central Illinois, we called the mid-day meal "lunch" and the evening meal "supper". The word "dinner" usually referred to the evening meal as a synonym for "supper", but on Sundays, "dinner" was the mid-day meal after church. The common element between the different dinners was that it always referred to the biggest meal of the day, and Sunday's lunch was the big meal of the day (with supper generally being smaller on Sunday). However, even on those occasional Sundays where lunch was small and supper was bigger, dinner was still lunch, probably just from tradition.
I was raised in the West Midlands of England, where we had the same rules. Sunday's midday meal was "dinner" and usually consisted of the full roast meal. The other days dinner was eaten in the evening. Now, as a Canadian, my evening meal is "supper."
it was the exact opposite for me. I suspect different families did different thing. My partner will say, 'Mum's coming over for Sunday dinner, which is usually midday' and that's so alien to me. I just want a sandwich a lunch time. I grew up calling lunch dinner apart from at school and college. Evening meal at college was 'High Tea'.
Exactly the case in New England, also. Sunday dinner automatically implied a roast and several vegetables, also a dessert. Every other evening meal was supper, unless you were going out to "dine" on a fancier meal, then that would be referred to as "going out to dinner", never "going out to supper".
We had pretty much the same rule in Hampshire (Southern England), except we'd have dinner in the evening on a Sunday if that was the biggest meal. Also, "tea" and "supper" were pretty much interchangeable.
Hello from Denmark. We have a funny word in dansh for the meal in the middle of the day *"frokost"* - which in Swedish (frukost) means breakfast. I have been told that the original meaning of the word was the second meal of the day. In the old farming way of life, the first meal when you got up at sunrise was just a quick bite, before you went out and looked to the animals. After that was done, you had the second meal, a bigger and more substantial one. That was the frokost/frukost. Around noon or early afternoon you had the third meal, the *"middagsmad"* (litt: Mid-day meal), and in the evening a little light meal, the *"aftensmad"* - evening meal. Over time the "frokost" became the midday meal in danish, and the "middag" became the big, main meal late in the day, the dinner, the supper, the "tea" . If a friend invites you to eat "middag" it's probably around seven or eight PM. (My parents always had the evening meal at six o clock.) And by the way, the "fro" in fro-kost is from middle low german *"vrō"* (“early”), compare to *"früh"* in modern german. "Kost" means "meal". Fro-kost = Early meal. The danish word *"måltid"* (meal) is combined of mål+tid. "Tid" means "time", and "mål" means ... also "time". Same word as meal and the german "mal" like Rob explained. Einmal, zweimal, nochmal etc... So "måltid" means meal-time, but what people mean is just "meal".
@@lakrids-pibe I wonder if that's related to the German "Feinkost" for delicatessen. "Kost" originates from the Old High German meaning "food" or "provisions." It is related to the verb "kiesen," which means "to choose" or "to select," indicating food that has been specially chosen or selected for its quality.
The second meal of the day..... That's what I understood as well. And on that I made my own interpretation of breakfast: a quick pause from work. But that's probably nonsense
Swedish speaking Finns who have Swedish as their mother tongue don't call breakfast 'frukost' but 'morgonmål' (morning meal) less confusion between Danish and Swedish in Finland, although I have seen it in sub titles all too many times, frokost translated as 'breakfast' so very strange, in Borgen the politicians had all too many breakfasts together 😅
In modern German, mål/meal has split into "Mahl" (meal) and "mal" (time), but the latter would only be used in the sense of "times" as in English 3 times 5 equals 15. I doubt that anyone speaking nowadays German will know the connection or relationship between Mahl and mal, as "time" is "Zeit" in German. And when you say 7 timer we say 7 Uhr, which literally means 7 clock or 7 watch which is a bit confusing - cf. Casablanca, the movie - especially when taking into consideration that clock is pretty similar to German "Glocke" which for whatever reason is called "bell" in English, which the Dutch and Germans both use with the word bellen, which means either calling someone on the phone (Dutch) or barking (German). Guess the time can be a confusing matter.
@@heikozysk233 In English it's "seven o' clock", which is a contraction of "seven of the clock" ... same thing. The US Navy still uses "eight bells and all's well". "Bell" is an Old English term has connections to Proto-Germanic "bellan," meaning "to roar" or "to make a loud noise." "Glocke" comes from the Middle High German "glocke" and Old High German "glocka." These, in turn, likely originated from the Late Latin word "clocca," which referred to a bell.
in german "wegbier" (way beer) is quite common and ... god.. as i was mid-sentence writing this, rob said wegbier as well. talk about timing. though other combination like wayfood, waymeals etc. are rare but still do pop up from time to time. though weg-nahrung / weg-futter (nourishment / fodder) are more common, i would say.
My mother, a biologist, says that, while scientifically a tomato is a fruit, in the kitchen it is a vegetable. The term "a vegetable" is a culinary one, not a scientific one. There are several other fruits that are vegetables in the kitchen,
When I landed in Germany with no knowledge of the language, I remember being so proud of myself for figuring out the compound word "frühstückszimmer" ("breakfast room").
@@teejay6063 North vs south in the UK too. In Manchester it was dinner at dinnertime (Midday ish) then tea at teatime (5pm ish). I have never had a "high tea" in my long life...
All my life we have had lunch in the middle of the day. Tea is the evening meal. Sunday midday is the only time we has dinner! ( I live in the South of South Island, New Zealand).
To me 'dinner' has always been the big meal of the day whatever time you do it with lunch and tea being the smaller ones at their appropriate times. Finally supper if you had an early tea and need a top up before bedtime. I was brought up in rural southern England but not farming community and my parents were both from the east end of London.
In New England (particularly the heavily Irish areas around Boston, Dinner and lunch differ only in meaning a hot or cold midday meal, respectively. Supper was the evening meal.
At the end of the bit about vanilla, well done to Rob for avoiding the obvious and not telling Jess it would be right up her alley. That would have resulted in blushes all round, I would imagine!
I haven't watched the episode yet but I just wanted to say that I love this series and may it continue for a long time. I love using etymology as a way of learning words in my target languages. Edit: If you separate smörgås to smör gås it becomes to words literarly meaning butter goose.
Many of my Swedish friends had pointed out to me that “smörgås” literally means “butter goose” but we weren’t etymologists so we didn’t follow it further. Your episodes are always fascinating. With any section, one is tempted to follow a word or phrase down “rabbit holes” and, like Alice, end up in a fascinating new world.
Yes, the word "smörgås" literally means "butter goose". When churning milk, there are clumpes of fat forming. These (sort of) look like geese (use your imagination...), which explains why sandwiches were called "bröd med smörgås" (bread with butter goose/geese) and are now just called "smörgås" for short.
I wish I could take credit, but Rob is a far more skillful video and audio editor than I am, and he and our friend Martin (who composed our theme music) take on that daring task. But you're correct that I'd also be tempted to leave that moment in if I had edited it. ;) - Jess
@@WordsUnravelled May I just say that Martin has done a wonderful job? It's cheerful and recognizable, and works well as an intro, a break and an ending.
Never gave it any thought really. A quick search tells me that sambo is also Irish slang for a sandwich or "samwich" with the added b and o for colloquialisation. I have used sanga plenty of times as well, quite often paired with banger to have a banger sanga.
If I remember correctly, the "seeds" on the outside of a strawberry aren't seeds, they're achenes; the seeds are inside the achenes, meaning the achenes are the actual fruit of the strawberry.
I think you're confusing common usage with botanical nomenclature, besides if a pair of shoes were in a box and and someone asked where the shoes were you'd just point at the box wouldn't you?
While avocado the fruit (actually aguacate in Spanish) and abogado (Spanish for lawyer) sound similar, they are very much not the same word (the V vs B thing is very important in spanish ortography). It's French where avocat means both the fruit and the lawyer.
@@jordillach3222 Huh, didn't know about palta, learned something new today, thanks. My Spanish is pretty much bland ol' castilian (which makes sense, 'cause I learned it in Spain), so stuff regional to South American countries is always interesting to learn about.
There is a relationship between fastener or fastening your seatbelt and breakfast. Fast in breakfast is holding off(food consumption in this case), and thus a fastener is a tool that tightens or holds tight. Steadfast is also related.
What wonderful videos! I have always loved words, and you two bring them to life. (Off topic, and not "PC"), I could watch Jess' face with the sound off, such a happy and expressive visage.
When we returned to England after our 20 year holiday in California, we stayed for a while with my paternal grandmother; - she always had: breakfast, elevenses, lunch, tea, dinner and supper. My impression nowadays is that _most_ people in the UK subsist [sic] on a mere 3 meals a day: either breakfast, lunch and dinner - or breakfast, dinner and supper - depending on whether the third or second meal (dinner) is the main meal of the day. "Wayfood" is reminiscent of Tolkien's "waybread" (lembas)
@@loisdungey3528 that's what it meant to me too in the UK. It's got the same root as sup, sop and soup. My dad had supper at about 10/11 at night until he died. My partner is very erratic on portion control so I sometimes I'll have supper. I get 'I'm not hungry, we'll just have a snack.' Meanwhile I've hardly eaten anything because normally my partner's starving and we have a big meal, so I never know what's going on!
On the topic of a tomato being a fruit, many years ago I had a very interesting meal at a Micheline 2-toq restaurant in Paris; the dessert was a half tomato seasoned with various spices and then baked in an oven until all the flavours commingled and the fruit was soft. Just prior to serving, a small oval of house-made anis-flavoured ice-cream was placed on top. It was a delicious sweet experience with an extremely complex interplay of flavours. And so the tomato is indeed a wonderful fruit!
I love learning from you both! It’s so much fun and I have been very curious about words since I was very young. You guys teach me so much and you make it fun! If you had a new video every week it wouldn’t be too much for me! Please do keep making these videos.
My mom used to have a standard evening food dish we all loved. It was called “slumgullion” and was made of meat, vegetables, and leftover pasta. We usually had it the last night before grocery shopping day. I’ve never heard of anyone else using the word or having it for a meal.
These complicated words of edible assortment are among my favorites. They're so inventive and absurd-but so apt! Salmagundi is another, and it shares a fun connection to Washington Irving. - Jess
Robs spontaneity with words is what brought me to continue listening to his videos. His accent was my initial draw. Which then lead here. For once I have “binge experienced” a show. I have played an episode several times in a day to really make sure that I was able to focus on all of the little things (watching straight through, watching with pauses to read things that appear on screen, & to look up rabbit trails that arise from the episodes.) I can’t say that I have been able to get through more than 3 episodes in a day & not really in a row either. But I get the draw of “binging” now.
Thanks folks! I think every family might have their own meal system. Usually had dinner at midday, the cooks were usually called "dinner ladies" at school. With guests or more formal occasions, dinner became lunch, and tea was eaten later as dinner, or occasionally supper if it was a buffet. Moist. I remember sitting in A level history class waiting to do a timed essay. Someone suggested that we all should try to insert the same odd word into our essays to see if it was spotted. We settled on moist, and it was. It made marking essays more enjoyable apparently! Ambrosia. Not heard more ironic name for food after hearing the description. What on earth did they do to the fruit in tinned fruit cocktail?!
Salad, by modern definition, is something “dressed”. So the sour cream in ambrosia, the mayonnaise in tuna (egg, chicken, etc.) salad, or the oil and vinegar all dress the food making them salads. Along those lines, a bowl of cereal is a salad. The meaning of the word salad is “salted” which just makes a bigger mess as far as defining what is and isn’t a salad. BTW, I love ambrosia as long as it doesn’t have coconut flakes.
In the Maritime provinces of Canada, hodge-podge is an early summer stew of green or wax beans, fresh peas, young carrots and sometimes new potatoes and other vegetables, finished with cream and butter. I had assumed the “podge” was a contraction of pottage
Aguacate is the Spanish word for what Americans call the avocado. "Avocado" is an invented word from American Dept of Agriculture, to market Aguacate in the U.S., because they were afraid Americans would not try/buy food whose name sounded too exotic or was difficult to pronounce.
Thank you, Jess and Rob, for making my commute home from university on Wednesday so much better. I always look forward to it. I have a note on my phone containing a list of etymologies I found interesting (it’s quite extensive now).
When I was little, "dinner" was the midday meal and in the evening we'd have supper. When we started school, the school would serve "lunch" at midday, so dinner and supper essentially became synonyms, although, there was still a sense that "dinner" was a major meal and so therefore could be used to describe either mealtime. If you took a date to eat, that would usually be "dinner" regardless of what we called the evening meal. As for the avocado, the modern Spanish word for this fruit is "aguacate" which follows a pretty standard pattern for turning Nahuatl words into Spanish words (hispanization? to match anglicization?). So, coyotl becomes coyote (which survives into English but with variant pronunciations, kai-oh-tee or kai-oat depending on where you're from), chocolatl become chocolate, and ahuacatl becomes aguacate (where the "gu" in some dialects is similar to an English "w"). My knowledge of Spanish etymology is not great, but in either case, the part about Spanish speaking folks trying to find a way to say that foreign word is exactly right. Coyote in English is also fascinating to me as I think the geographic variation in the US might be related to Native American influences.
I am a German-speaking Belgian, and I also speak French, but like in Belgium! the word "déjeuner" is lunch in Belgium, but breakfast in France! when I am in France, I always say "repas au matin" also "morning meal" :-) then everyone knows.😁😁😁
In Switzerland they also say translated from the German: Morgenessen =morning meal, probably for that reason? In other German speaking countries it is Frühstuck:=early meal
A wonderfully entertaining episode. Thank you. Now I'll giggle every time I see vanilla in our cupboard. On another note, I also wondered why pork shoulder was called a "pork butt" when I last smoked one. Apparently, back in the day, butchers would put large cuts of pork, such as a pork shoulder, into barrels, called "butts" for storage and transportation. Hence, pork butt
Absolutely fantastic episode as always. You make it all so fun & entertaining. I always love it when Rob starts to blush lol 😂 his facial expressions are absolutley priceless haha 😁
In Peru there are literally thousands of varieties of potato, including blue, yellow, red, pink and even bright purple ones. Our daughter spent a summer in Peru with a host family and got to try many different varieties.
school dinners were always at lunchtime. as a child all we had were two meals a day , breakfast and school dinners during the week, this as the norm for most of my friends as our parents could not afford to feed us 3 meals a day,
In my family growing up, we used the term "supper" to refer to the big meal of the day eaten in the later afternoon (we at at around 5pm), but only from Monday-Saturday. On Sunday, we had the large meal at around 2pm and called that "dinner", while we had a snack in the early evening on Sunday.
I remember watching a MatPat video about if breakfast, lunch, or dinner were the most important meal of the day and how it was hard to research because all three were used to refer to each other.
In the south eastern region in the US, Lunch is the word for the midday meal, and Supper is the word for the evening meal. Dinner is usually a meal with a larger, more formal meal implying a gathering of more people, and that meal can come at the midday or the evening, For instance, you can have a dinner party in hte evening gathering a group of friends. You can also have Dinner on Sunday after church, when a group gathers for that.
in Canada we call it back bacon. now do i have to start calling it Canadian back-back? sounds like something you eat around a campfire while drinking beers.
For the longest time, I always thought Canadian bacon came from Canada. Now I’m wondering why that particular type of bacon came to be known as Canadian.
I love the explanation for why dinner has become a later meal, it makes total sense. It happened in Sweden too, where dinner is called "middag" but "eftermiddag" ("after dinner") means afternoon! However, I have recently learned that the much cherished explanation for cow/beef etc. is a myth (started by Walter Scott in Ivanhoe!). Apparently those French food words weren't used consistently in English as we use them today until French cuisine became trendy in the 19th century. The whole explanation here: th-cam.com/video/dL2vtwdEFaY/w-d-xo.htmlsi=txAVqtzipJ6BqM2q
I just wanted to say I'm so happy you two made this podcast. Awesome etomology facts! I enjoyed this way too much 😅 BTW Rob, your channel is one of my favorites⭐
Growing up in New Jersey, we had breakfast, dinner, supper. For us, the midday meal was called dinner because you'd eat at a diner. Also, while not necessarily correct, I always considered "vegetable" to mean "edible vegetation" and thus all fruits are technically vegetables but the distinction should be that vegetables are the leaves, stems, or roots while fruits are specifically the reproductive portions of a plant (ex: flowers, berries, etc.). Of course, this would mean that cereal grains or maize are fruits. This personal interpretation of vegetable also meant that I always interpreted "animal, vegetable or mineral" to mean "fauna, flora, or inorganic material"
Growing up in my family, dinner was the large meal of the day, usually in the evening (after having had lunch at noon). But on Sundays, some holidays, and a few other occasions, dinner was the (large) midday meal, with supper coming that evening. Now at 81, I still regard that as the "norm".
I first ran across the distinction between "supper" and "dinner" in Bram Stoker's _Dracula_ where the titular character says "You will I trust, excuse me that I do not join you, but I have dined already, and I do not sup." This led me to looking up how the usage had changed as the large meal of the day shifted from midday to the evening with the expansion of urban populations that did not need a large meal at midday to provide the energy for the afternoon's farm work.
The word for food in Norwegian is "mat" (related to our word "meat") and a grocery store is sometimes called a matbutikk. Also, the Chinese word for dinner is 晚饭 (wanfan) where "fan" means rice. So they use rice where we use meal for both the sense of grain and of eating.
@@telemedic5142the "original" mincemeat (medieval era or thereabouts) was minced meat with various herbs and spices added. Over the course of time, the meat was replaced by dried fruit and the other ingredients that we (in the UK at least, I can't speak for other countries) recognise today.
Bread in Hebrew is “לחם”-spelled lekhem in English. The same word means meat in the local Palestinian Arabic (pronounced more like lakhem). The birthplace of Jesus Christ is Bethlehem (house of L*Kh*M) which means fought or battled. The fruit of the Malva plant is edible and called “Khubeiza” from the local word ‘bread’ in Arabic (khubez). The official name of the plant in Hebrew uses the rearranged letters Kh*L*M as Khelmit, but ask any Hebrew speaker what they’re chewing on and they’ll answer: “Lekhem Aravi” -Arab bread.
In Australia, we have a similar term to Wegbier. A ‘roadie’ coming from ‘one for the road’ and you drink it to top you up until you reach the next pub or for your way home, but it’s usually just the last drink you have quickly before you leave the pub.
I thoroughly enjoy this podcast and I realize that a lot of our Swedish words are, of course, Germanic but also very close to those of old English. Flour in Swedish is mjöl. Cooked pig, if you will, is fläsk. A meal, as served at the table, is a måltid.
why say it now? We don't need to know what you think about her looks and I'm not being politically correct but it's just really odd since it's your person feelings about someone's appearance. I'd say it to a friend but why announce it to the world without anyone knowing who you are? I mean, what are you telling us?
@@michaelashley2855 yeah, like fingernails on a blackboard or forks squeaking a cross a dinner plate! I put it down to too many woodburning stoves and firepits. You can't have people living too long now!
From SE USA - we always called the mid day meal “lunch” and the evening meal “supper.” Supper was used interchangeably with dinner, but dinner more often was a special meal. Like Thanksgiving dinner or Christmas dinner. Our family called the main Sunday meal dinner and most often it was the only meal after breakfast that day. The rest of the day would be snacking on leftovers.
Horticulture school taught me that, scientifically, "fruit" refers to a fertilized and mature ovary of a plant. Grocers came up with common distinctions between "fruit" and "vegetable".
in spanish we call chamomile manzanilla, a diminutive for the word manzana, meaning apple, so it was really interesting to know that chamomile came from the greek for earth apple. thanks! and i’d be willing to bet tacos are called that cuz like the wadding in a musket, you’re stuffing the tortilla in a way
Regarding the word "dinner" originally referring to the first meal of the day, that perfectly mirrors what happened in Portuguese. Nowadays, the evening time meal corresponding to "dinner" is, in Portuguese, "jantar". But originally "jantar" was the first meal of the day, then it moved to lunchtime (what we now call "almoço"), and finally it moved to the evening, replacing "ceia" (Portuguese for "supper") or at least pushing it to a later time.
Sweet potatoes aren't tubers. Tubers are modified stems (potatoes, on the other hand, ARE tubers), but sweet potatoes are modified roots. Both grow underground and store food so that the plant can use it later, but roots and stems are different things.
With fruits and veggies, you have to remember there are the botanical definitions and the culinary definitions. And the culinary definition changes with location. A tomato is a fruit because it contains the seeds (botanical) but we use it as a vegetable (culinary) in our cooking.
The modern Norwegian word for "meal" is "måltid".. as in "meal time", which apparently just means "time time"! Incidentally it is now about time for a time time!
@@Vestlys1 We have Norwegian tid, and German zeit. How does a t or d become the m in time? Presumably, such a drift can happen, as time and zeit are reportedly related. But interestingly, the word tide is closer to zeit and tid, and originally meant time. It persists in expressions such as Yule-tide.
Kiwi fruit used to be called “Chinese gooseberry” (and even further back was called mihoutao in Chinese- meaning “macaque fruit, because those monkeys loved it!)
@@kevinmcqueenie7420 I also heard at some point that it was a bit of a marketing thing, as "kiwi fruit" had an immediate identification with New Zealand.
I'm a New Zealander and I can confirm that the term "kiwifruit" didn't exist in my childhood. It was definitely invented for marketing purposes. It was meant to be a brand name unique to NZ, but someone screwed up and didn't secure all the necessary trademark rights, so it's become a generic term worldwide now.
Part 2 should definitely include all the pastas. lots are diminutives: little tongues, little strings, little cakes, little ears, little queens, little ribbons. there are also feathers/pens, spindles, priest stranglers, wraps, (angel) hair, butterflies, spirals, shells, barley/rice grains, brides/grooms, thimbles, twins, bells, big snails....
I used to be an ESL instructor and really wish I had access to you back then. My students would have found all this fascinating, or at least some of them. I certainly do! I am a Canadian from German/Austrian background who was born in Quebec and grew up mainly in Ontario. I love English and speak and understand German and French. Keep it up guys!
This is one of the absolute best collaborations available. You are both engaging and informative. Please, please - keep it up!
Yeah, it's a team that fits.
New drinking game: Take a shot whenever Rob blushes. Even blushing when admitting he liked the word "moist."😂
I fear for your liver.
R
I'm going to sit this drinking game out, as I usually watch these videos around breakfast time.
@@kyleward3914 Gotta save the drinking for nuncheon.
There’s a simple explanation: he’s British.
They are a wonderful couple.
I'm watching this, and I am like, "Geez, Rob, and Jess get so excited over seemly small things like lunch is to lump as bunch is to bump." Then realize I've watched every episode so far and love every minute. Am I, am I....an etymology nerd?
Yes you are and I’m realizing that I am too!😂
It’s so much fun!
I’ve always been fascinated by where our words come from. I was thrilled to find Rob and now Jess! Etymology is one of my nerdy things too I guess.😊
Welcome to the club!
One of us! One of us! One of us!
Embrace it.
Not all Spanish speaking countries call pineapple "ananás"; some call it "piña", which comes from "piñón", which is the word for pine cone in Spanish. Also, in Spanish, we kept a lot closer to the Nahuatl pronunciation of avocado: from "ahuacatl", we went to "aguacate", and in Spanish, the word for lawyer, "abogado", does not really sound like "aguacate".
In French, though, they're both «avocat». I sometimes call avocados lawyerfruits.
And Portuguese uses Advogado/Advogada (depending on the gender of the lawyer).
I’ve heard both piña and ananás living in the US, but piña is by far the most common in the Americas (anecdotally lol)
The English word for it definitely came from the Spanish word "abogado" (or that word misheard). Whether the Spanish-speaking person who introduced it was making a lawyer joke is up for debate :)
In the Philippines (with lots of Spanish loan words where we were in Luzon), pineapple was piña.
Adding to the "dinner vs. supper" commentary: I worked at a nursing facility in southern Appalachia. Due to the variety of backgrounds of the residents, who had varying meal words, some of the staff said "noon meal" and "evening meal" to survive the arguments.
I’m french. In the 1950s and 1960s, dîner was the midday meal (around noon-1pm) and souper was the evening meal (around 7-8pm). It is still the case in Belgium and Québec. Then the french TV spread the Parisian way of naming meals. So the midday meal became déjeuner, and the evening one became dîner.
We need to coin a word when Rob turns red like a lobster, maybe "Robstering"
that's an interesting use of 'we'
@@meadow-maker thank you!
Yesss! I submit "Robining"
The "Robsterification" is very strong with this Rob.
Robster the lobster the mobster
Wow, what a revelatory episode! In all my years of writing and editing, I've never taken a deep dive into the etymology of food words. And, thanks to you two, I have a refreshed appreciation for vanilla. ;-)
I grew up in southern Georgia of the US, coming into my wits in the mid-1950s, and everyone I knew called the midday meal dinner. Our meals were breakfast, dinner, and supper. This caused me some trouble twice down the years when I arranged to meet someone for dinner and they assumed I meant the evening meal. I love this channel!
That's a perfectly normal thing up here in Québec. Over here,
breakfast = déjeuner
dinner = dîner
supper = souper
It's been that way for a *very* long time and it ain't about to change :)
We always had Breakfast, Lunch and Tea Except on Sunday when we had dinner in the middle of the day!
It's something of an anomaly because Sunday dinner was generally not a lot different from the Tea that we had the rest of the week!
They called the noon meal dinner in southwest Louisiana as well.
we have the same issue here in the UK but as long as you know who you're talking to or you can guess from the way they speak then it's rarely too much of an issue and you just ask for clarification without trying to sound snobby. Sunday dinner is another thing all together and you have to ask. I grew up having dinner at midday and Sunday dinner at 18:00 which makes no sense in terms of the use of 'dinner'. 18:00 meals the rest of the week were 'tea' and usually 'your tea'. I wouldn't use that myself now because it makes me feel like I'm 5 years old.
This may have more to do with my own dining habits, but now that I think about it, what I call "dinner" is the largest meal of the day, but it can be any time after noon; if I call a meal "supper," though, it's always in the evening. The variations are interesting! - Jess
“Why did I do a song?” Hahaha! That was hilarious!
Growing up in Edinburgh in the 1960s, the sequence of meals was: 8 am breakfast, 11 am elevenses, 1pm dinner, 3 pm afternoon tea, 5.30pm high tea, 7pm supper. In those days, my father, who worked in an insurance office in the middle of town, would come home for lunch and it was expected that high tea would be ready to be served immediately when he got home from the office in the evening. Dinner was the biggest meal of the day with three courses.
Wow, great insight into life. Thanks for sharing. Did everyone always eat together if they were at home for these meals? Seems people would be more connected to each other if they did.
He came home for lunch, yet none of the meals you mentioned was "lunch". Poor guy!
People used to be able to go home for [MID-DAY MEAL]‽
Growing up in central Illinois, we called the mid-day meal "lunch" and the evening meal "supper". The word "dinner" usually referred to the evening meal as a synonym for "supper", but on Sundays, "dinner" was the mid-day meal after church. The common element between the different dinners was that it always referred to the biggest meal of the day, and Sunday's lunch was the big meal of the day (with supper generally being smaller on Sunday). However, even on those occasional Sundays where lunch was small and supper was bigger, dinner was still lunch, probably just from tradition.
Breakfast, Lunch and Tea (not supper). Dinner was Sunday midday meal. This is South Island, New Zealand ( possibly more Southland province).
I was raised in the West Midlands of England, where we had the same rules. Sunday's midday meal was "dinner" and usually consisted of the full roast meal. The other days dinner was eaten in the evening. Now, as a Canadian, my evening meal is "supper."
it was the exact opposite for me. I suspect different families did different thing. My partner will say, 'Mum's coming over for Sunday dinner, which is usually midday' and that's so alien to me. I just want a sandwich a lunch time. I grew up calling lunch dinner apart from at school and college. Evening meal at college was 'High Tea'.
Exactly the case in New England, also. Sunday dinner automatically implied a roast and several vegetables, also a dessert. Every other evening meal was supper, unless you were going out to "dine" on a fancier meal, then that would be referred to as "going out to dinner", never "going out to supper".
We had pretty much the same rule in Hampshire (Southern England), except we'd have dinner in the evening on a Sunday if that was the biggest meal. Also, "tea" and "supper" were pretty much interchangeable.
Hello from Denmark.
We have a funny word in dansh for the meal in the middle of the day *"frokost"* - which in Swedish (frukost) means breakfast.
I have been told that the original meaning of the word was the second meal of the day.
In the old farming way of life, the first meal when you got up at sunrise was just a quick bite, before you went out and looked to the animals.
After that was done, you had the second meal, a bigger and more substantial one. That was the frokost/frukost.
Around noon or early afternoon you had the third meal, the *"middagsmad"* (litt: Mid-day meal), and in the evening a little light meal, the *"aftensmad"* - evening meal.
Over time the "frokost" became the midday meal in danish, and the "middag" became the big, main meal late in the day, the dinner, the supper, the "tea" . If a friend invites you to eat "middag" it's probably around seven or eight PM. (My parents always had the evening meal at six o clock.)
And by the way, the "fro" in fro-kost is from middle low german *"vrō"* (“early”), compare to *"früh"* in modern german. "Kost" means "meal". Fro-kost = Early meal.
The danish word *"måltid"* (meal) is combined of mål+tid. "Tid" means "time", and "mål" means ... also "time". Same word as meal and the german "mal" like Rob explained. Einmal, zweimal, nochmal etc...
So "måltid" means meal-time, but what people mean is just "meal".
@@lakrids-pibe I wonder if that's related to the German "Feinkost" for delicatessen. "Kost" originates from the Old High German meaning "food" or "provisions." It is related to the verb "kiesen," which means "to choose" or "to select," indicating food that has been specially chosen or selected for its quality.
The second meal of the day.....
That's what I understood as well. And on that I made my own interpretation of breakfast: a quick pause from work.
But that's probably nonsense
Swedish speaking Finns who have Swedish as their mother tongue don't call breakfast 'frukost' but 'morgonmål' (morning meal) less confusion between Danish and Swedish in Finland, although I have seen it in sub titles all too many times, frokost translated as 'breakfast' so very strange, in Borgen the politicians had all too many breakfasts together 😅
In modern German, mål/meal has split into "Mahl" (meal) and "mal" (time), but the latter would only be used in the sense of "times" as in English 3 times 5 equals 15. I doubt that anyone speaking nowadays German will know the connection or relationship between Mahl and mal, as "time" is "Zeit" in German. And when you say 7 timer we say 7 Uhr, which literally means 7 clock or 7 watch which is a bit confusing - cf. Casablanca, the movie - especially when taking into consideration that clock is pretty similar to German "Glocke" which for whatever reason is called "bell" in English, which the Dutch and Germans both use with the word bellen, which means either calling someone on the phone (Dutch) or barking (German). Guess the time can be a confusing matter.
@@heikozysk233 In English it's "seven o' clock", which is a contraction of "seven of the clock" ... same thing. The US Navy still uses "eight bells and all's well". "Bell" is an Old English term has connections to Proto-Germanic "bellan," meaning "to roar" or "to make a loud noise." "Glocke" comes from the Middle High German "glocke" and Old High German "glocka." These, in turn, likely originated from the Late Latin word "clocca," which referred to a bell.
Immediately replacing "road snacks" with "wayfood".
Also, Jess's face when describing ambrosia was so cute.
Ambrosia is delicious, but Tiramisu (Northern Italian version) is hard to beat!
In USA it is take out food. In the UK it is Take away ...interesting.
Call it "Lembas".
in german "wegbier" (way beer) is quite common and ... god.. as i was mid-sentence writing this, rob said wegbier as well. talk about timing.
though other combination like wayfood, waymeals etc. are rare but still do pop up from time to time. though weg-nahrung / weg-futter (nourishment / fodder) are more common, i would say.
Afrikaans still has “padkos”. Brings back memories of childhood road trips.
My mother, a biologist, says that, while scientifically a tomato is a fruit, in the kitchen it is a vegetable. The term "a vegetable" is a culinary one, not a scientific one.
There are several other fruits that are vegetables in the kitchen,
I'm a biologist. I agree with your mother.
Seeing how much you both thoroughly enjoy what you're doing makes it a real pleasure to watch your videos.
When I landed in Germany with no knowledge of the language, I remember being so proud of myself for figuring out the compound word "frühstückszimmer" ("breakfast room").
"dinner" vs "supper" was something i first heard about in "Are You Being Served?" reruns on PBS when i was a kid
A class tv prog! I’m free!!
Farmers still refer to the midday meal as dinner and the evening meal as supper. It's country vs urban still.
Never knew. Cool.
@@teejay6063 North vs south in the UK too. In Manchester it was dinner at dinnertime (Midday ish) then tea at teatime (5pm ish). I have never had a "high tea" in my long life...
All my life we have had lunch in the middle of the day. Tea is the evening meal. Sunday midday is the only time we has dinner! ( I live in the South of South Island, New Zealand).
To me 'dinner' has always been the big meal of the day whatever time you do it with lunch and tea being the smaller ones at their appropriate times. Finally supper if you had an early tea and need a top up before bedtime. I was brought up in rural southern England but not farming community and my parents were both from the east end of London.
In New England (particularly the heavily Irish areas around Boston, Dinner and lunch differ only in meaning a hot or cold midday meal, respectively. Supper was the evening meal.
I found it interesting that the word for banana comes from West Africa and it means fingertips, since the word has that meaning in Arabic as well!
At the end of the bit about vanilla, well done to Rob for avoiding the obvious and not telling Jess it would be right up her alley. That would have resulted in blushes all round, I would imagine!
I had the same thought.
I'd have been cackling for days! - Jess
Me (urban): Breakfast, Lunch, Dinnner. Wife (rural): Breakfast, Dinner, Supper. I'll never not be confused by this.
I haven't watched the episode yet but I just wanted to say that I love this series and may it continue for a long time. I love using etymology as a way of learning words in my target languages.
Edit: If you separate smörgås to smör gås it becomes to words literarly meaning butter goose.
Thank you for listening/watching!
The dynamics of this pair is so uplifting, cool-nerdy, and infectious!!
Many of my Swedish friends had pointed out to me that “smörgås” literally means “butter goose” but we weren’t etymologists so we didn’t follow it further. Your episodes are always fascinating. With any section, one is tempted to follow a word or phrase down “rabbit holes” and, like Alice, end up in a fascinating new world.
And speaking of rabbit holes: I suggest we call that a bunny butt from now on
Yes, the word "smörgås" literally means "butter goose". When churning milk, there are clumpes of fat forming. These (sort of) look like geese (use your imagination...), which explains why sandwiches were called "bröd med smörgås" (bread with butter goose/geese) and are now just called "smörgås" for short.
9:02 - "We're not keeping that in." 🤣 I guess that confirms that Jess is in charge of the editing 😁.
And yet...
Rob said that not Jess.
I wish I could take credit, but Rob is a far more skillful video and audio editor than I am, and he and our friend Martin (who composed our theme music) take on that daring task. But you're correct that I'd also be tempted to leave that moment in if I had edited it. ;) - Jess
@@WordsUnravelled May I just say that Martin has done a wonderful job? It's cheerful and recognizable, and works well as an intro, a break and an ending.
Now knowing the etymology of vanilla makes it all the funnier, seeing that the vanilla plant is a type of orchid.
We make it easier in Australia when it comes to sandwiches.
If it's not toasted it's called a sambo.
If it's toasted it's a toastie.
As an Australia, I would love to know where the b and m in sambo came from.
I know of a sandwich as a 'sanga', not sambo. I've never heard anyone call it a sambo. Could be a regional variation though.
@@killakoala10 I’ve heard sanga but I don’t personally use it.
In danish "en sambo" is a roommate.
"Sam" from "sammen" - together, and "bo" is the place you live.
Never gave it any thought really. A quick search tells me that sambo is also Irish slang for a sandwich or "samwich" with the added b and o for colloquialisation.
I have used sanga plenty of times as well, quite often paired with banger to have a banger sanga.
If I remember correctly, the "seeds" on the outside of a strawberry aren't seeds, they're achenes; the seeds are inside the achenes, meaning the achenes are the actual fruit of the strawberry.
I think you're confusing common usage with botanical nomenclature, besides if a pair of shoes were in a box and and someone asked where the shoes were you'd just point at the box wouldn't you?
Strawberries are classed as a pseudocarp.
@@Suxipumpkin Strawberries are vegetables.
@@doomsdayrabbit4398 just like tomatoes? 😉
@@Suxipumpkin No, tomatoes are pretty solidly fruits. Just like cucumbers.
While avocado the fruit (actually aguacate in Spanish) and abogado (Spanish for lawyer) sound similar, they are very much not the same word (the V vs B thing is very important in spanish ortography). It's French where avocat means both the fruit and the lawyer.
In the Southern Parts of South America we don't say _aguacate_ at all, but _palta._
And yes, lawyer is _abogado_ in Spanish.
@@jordillach3222 Huh, didn't know about palta, learned something new today, thanks. My Spanish is pretty much bland ol' castilian (which makes sense, 'cause I learned it in Spain), so stuff regional to South American countries is always interesting to learn about.
There is a relationship between fastener or fastening your seatbelt and breakfast. Fast in breakfast is holding off(food consumption in this case), and thus a fastener is a tool that tightens or holds tight. Steadfast is also related.
Yes, in high school (in Argentina), I was taught that little bags of salt was used as a form of currency, a from it, the word “salario” (salary).
I still get paid that way.
Absolutely love this channel! It's great to have a guilty pleasure that I don't actually have to feel guilty about!
What wonderful videos! I have always loved words, and you two bring them to life.
(Off topic, and not "PC"), I could watch Jess' face with the sound off, such a happy and expressive visage.
When we returned to England after our 20 year holiday in California, we stayed for a while with my paternal grandmother; - she always had: breakfast, elevenses, lunch, tea, dinner and supper.
My impression nowadays is that _most_ people in the UK subsist [sic] on a mere 3 meals a day: either breakfast, lunch and dinner - or breakfast, dinner and supper - depending on whether the third or second meal (dinner) is the main meal of the day.
"Wayfood" is reminiscent of Tolkien's "waybread" (lembas)
Lol, my late father-in-law always insisted on 6 'meals' a day. Only time we use the word supper, in NZ, is for the evening snack before bed!
Could "lembas" be related to the German "Imbiss" for snack?
@@loisdungey3528 that's what it meant to me too in the UK. It's got the same root as sup, sop and soup. My dad had supper at about 10/11 at night until he died. My partner is very erratic on portion control so I sometimes I'll have supper. I get 'I'm not hungry, we'll just have a snack.' Meanwhile I've hardly eaten anything because normally my partner's starving and we have a big meal, so I never know what's going on!
I like to play "Spot the Spelling Mistake". I don't always find anything, but "peech" is a winner this time.
Another great episode.
You're abillity to catsch speling misteaks is peechy kean!
For a moment I was wondering if it was the US spelling of peach.😄
On the topic of a tomato being a fruit, many years ago I had a very interesting meal at a Micheline 2-toq restaurant in Paris; the dessert was a half tomato seasoned with various spices and then baked in an oven until all the flavours commingled and the fruit was soft. Just prior to serving, a small oval of house-made anis-flavoured ice-cream was placed on top. It was a delicious sweet experience with an extremely complex interplay of flavours. And so the tomato is indeed a wonderful fruit!
I love learning from you both! It’s so much fun and I have been very curious about words since I was very young. You guys teach me so much and you
make it fun!
If you had a new video every week it wouldn’t be too much for me!
Please do keep making these videos.
My mom used to have a standard evening food dish we all loved. It was called “slumgullion” and was made of meat, vegetables, and leftover pasta. We usually had it the last night before grocery shopping day. I’ve never heard of anyone else using the word or having it for a meal.
My understanding is that it was an old military dish, basically leftover soup/stew, kept warm for anyone wanting to eat outside regular meal times.
These complicated words of edible assortment are among my favorites. They're so inventive and absurd-but so apt! Salmagundi is another, and it shares a fun connection to Washington Irving. - Jess
Robs spontaneity with words is what brought me to continue listening to his videos. His accent was my initial draw. Which then lead here. For once I have “binge experienced” a show. I have played an episode several times in a day to really make sure that I was able to focus on all of the little things (watching straight through, watching with pauses to read things that appear on screen, & to look up rabbit trails that arise from the episodes.) I can’t say that I have been able to get through more than 3 episodes in a day & not really in a row either. But I get the draw of “binging” now.
Thanks folks!
I think every family might have their own meal system. Usually had dinner at midday, the cooks were usually called "dinner ladies" at school. With guests or more formal occasions, dinner became lunch, and tea was eaten later as dinner, or occasionally supper if it was a buffet.
Moist.
I remember sitting in A level history class waiting to do a timed essay. Someone suggested that we all should try to insert the same odd word into our essays to see if it was spotted. We settled on moist, and it was. It made marking essays more enjoyable apparently!
Ambrosia. Not heard more ironic name for food after hearing the description. What on earth did they do to the fruit in tinned fruit cocktail?!
This is by far my favorite of this series so far! SO MUCH INFO!!
Salad, by modern definition, is something “dressed”. So the sour cream in ambrosia, the mayonnaise in tuna (egg, chicken, etc.) salad, or the oil and vinegar all dress the food making them salads. Along those lines, a bowl of cereal is a salad. The meaning of the word salad is “salted” which just makes a bigger mess as far as defining what is and isn’t a salad. BTW, I love ambrosia as long as it doesn’t have coconut flakes.
In the Maritime provinces of Canada, hodge-podge is an early summer stew of green or wax beans, fresh peas, young carrots and sometimes new potatoes and other vegetables, finished with cream and butter. I had assumed the “podge” was a contraction of pottage
Aguacate is the Spanish word for what Americans call the avocado. "Avocado" is an invented word from American Dept of Agriculture, to market Aguacate in the U.S., because they were afraid Americans would not try/buy food whose name sounded too exotic or was difficult to pronounce.
Where I grew up, in the American south, dinner was the meal you ate at noon and supper was the meal you ate in the evening.
Newcastle upon Tyne, Breakfast, dinner, tea, supper. If you are talking to someone about "dinnertime" they'd think you meant 12pm to 1pm.
Thank you, Jess and Rob, for making my commute home from university on Wednesday so much better. I always look forward to it. I have a note on my phone containing a list of etymologies I found interesting (it’s quite extensive now).
Fantastic! Thanks for listening. Safe journey home!
When I was little, "dinner" was the midday meal and in the evening we'd have supper. When we started school, the school would serve "lunch" at midday, so dinner and supper essentially became synonyms, although, there was still a sense that "dinner" was a major meal and so therefore could be used to describe either mealtime. If you took a date to eat, that would usually be "dinner" regardless of what we called the evening meal.
As for the avocado, the modern Spanish word for this fruit is "aguacate" which follows a pretty standard pattern for turning Nahuatl words into Spanish words (hispanization? to match anglicization?). So, coyotl becomes coyote (which survives into English but with variant pronunciations, kai-oh-tee or kai-oat depending on where you're from), chocolatl become chocolate, and ahuacatl becomes aguacate (where the "gu" in some dialects is similar to an English "w"). My knowledge of Spanish etymology is not great, but in either case, the part about Spanish speaking folks trying to find a way to say that foreign word is exactly right.
Coyote in English is also fascinating to me as I think the geographic variation in the US might be related to Native American influences.
I recall dinner meant lunch at one time too. It must have changed when media like tv and radio started spreading american speech patterns is my guess.
Thanks Jess and Rob for sharing the intrigue and joys of etymology. Much appreciated, cheers!
I am a German-speaking Belgian, and I also speak French, but like in Belgium!
the word "déjeuner" is lunch in Belgium, but breakfast in France!
when I am in France, I always say "repas au matin" also "morning meal" :-)
then everyone knows.😁😁😁
In Switzerland they also say translated from the German: Morgenessen =morning meal, probably for that reason? In other German speaking countries it is Frühstuck:=early meal
and the breakfast is a petit-dejeuner!
A wonderfully entertaining episode. Thank you. Now I'll giggle every time I see vanilla in our cupboard. On another note, I also wondered why pork shoulder was called a "pork butt" when I last smoked one. Apparently, back in the day, butchers would put large cuts of pork, such as a pork shoulder, into barrels, called "butts" for storage and transportation. Hence, pork butt
You two make me so happy.
Absolutely fantastic episode as always. You make it all so fun & entertaining. I always love it when Rob starts to blush lol 😂 his facial expressions are absolutley priceless haha 😁
In Peru there are literally thousands of varieties of potato, including blue, yellow, red, pink and even bright purple ones. Our daughter spent a summer in Peru with a host family and got to try many different varieties.
school dinners were always at lunchtime. as a child all we had were two meals a day , breakfast and school dinners during the week, this as the norm for most of my friends as our parents could not afford to feed us 3 meals a day,
I always hope I’ll have some intelligent comment to make but as ever I am sat here chuckling at ‘pork butt’ 😂
In my family growing up, we used the term "supper" to refer to the big meal of the day eaten in the later afternoon (we at at around 5pm), but only from Monday-Saturday. On Sunday, we had the large meal at around 2pm and called that "dinner", while we had a snack in the early evening on Sunday.
I remember watching a MatPat video about if breakfast, lunch, or dinner were the most important meal of the day and how it was hard to research because all three were used to refer to each other.
This may be my favorite episode
🥑🍦
The brilliant German Wegbier is also a "walker" (Laufer)
In the south eastern region in the US, Lunch is the word for the midday meal, and Supper is the word for the evening meal. Dinner is usually a meal with a larger, more formal meal implying a gathering of more people, and that meal can come at the midday or the evening, For instance, you can have a dinner party in hte evening gathering a group of friends. You can also have Dinner on Sunday after church, when a group gathers for that.
What Rob referred to as "back bacon" is known in the U.S. as "Canadian bacon."
in Canada we call it back bacon. now do i have to start calling it Canadian back-back? sounds like something you eat around a campfire while drinking beers.
I did not know that. Thanks!
@@philgman Canada's chief exports are ice and Canadian bacon, according to The Onion
Well I suggest that Canadians now change from calling it Back Bacon and instead use US Bacon, or American Bacon ;)
For the longest time, I always thought Canadian bacon came from Canada. Now I’m wondering why that particular type of bacon came to be known as Canadian.
I love the explanation for why dinner has become a later meal, it makes total sense. It happened in Sweden too, where dinner is called "middag" but "eftermiddag" ("after dinner") means afternoon! However, I have recently learned that the much cherished explanation for cow/beef etc. is a myth (started by Walter Scott in Ivanhoe!). Apparently those French food words weren't used consistently in English as we use them today until French cuisine became trendy in the 19th century. The whole explanation here: th-cam.com/video/dL2vtwdEFaY/w-d-xo.htmlsi=txAVqtzipJ6BqM2q
“My vegetable love should grow” from the poem To His Coy Mistress by Andrew Marvell, 1681.
13:55 in our house "trunch" is used to mean an early tea at the weekend, maybe at 3pm, instead of lunch and tea.
Brunch is a fairly new addition to our menu. Coined in 1895 in Hunter's Weekly and became popular in America during the 1930s.
That’s a porte manteau!
I just wanted to say I'm so happy you two made this podcast. Awesome etomology facts! I enjoyed this way too much 😅 BTW Rob, your channel is one of my favorites⭐
Pork butt or Boston butt is pork shoulder packed in large casks (butts)
And I bet there were no Hocks in that barrel, just Pork Butts .... a Butt of Butts :)
Growing up in New Jersey, we had breakfast, dinner, supper. For us, the midday meal was called dinner because you'd eat at a diner.
Also, while not necessarily correct, I always considered "vegetable" to mean "edible vegetation" and thus all fruits are technically vegetables but the distinction should be that vegetables are the leaves, stems, or roots while fruits are specifically the reproductive portions of a plant (ex: flowers, berries, etc.). Of course, this would mean that cereal grains or maize are fruits.
This personal interpretation of vegetable also meant that I always interpreted "animal, vegetable or mineral" to mean "fauna, flora, or inorganic material"
Jess says that Taco is related to the word for wadding. I take that to mean 'stuffing', so a taco is a 'stuffed' tortilla.
Growing up in my family, dinner was the large meal of the day, usually in the evening (after having had lunch at noon). But on Sundays, some holidays, and a few other occasions, dinner was the (large) midday meal, with supper coming that evening.
Now at 81, I still regard that as the "norm".
Rob with "moist" lol. Way to keep that in there.
I first ran across the distinction between "supper" and "dinner" in Bram Stoker's _Dracula_ where the titular character says "You will I trust, excuse me that I do not join you, but I have dined already, and I do not sup." This led me to looking up how the usage had changed as the large meal of the day shifted from midday to the evening with the expansion of urban populations that did not need a large meal at midday to provide the energy for the afternoon's farm work.
In the Spanish they speak in Southern California, a “lawyer” or “attorney” is an “abogado”.
"Yo soy abogado!" th-cam.com/video/p4UFbbdeQLg/w-d-xo.htmlsi=EVMzFhjDM_DdXqA9
I wonder how the pronunciation differs with a native Spanish speaker. Because Arent the b and v sounds very similar in Spanish?
Testicles are huevos (eggs).
Not only there. _Abogado_ is the standard word for lawyer in all Spanish-speaking countries.
@@jordillach3222yes, but avocado is aguacate or abacate in Portuguese. No native speaker thinks lawyer and avocado sound the same
The word for food in Norwegian is "mat" (related to our word "meat") and a grocery store is sometimes called a matbutikk.
Also, the Chinese word for dinner is 晚饭 (wanfan) where "fan" means rice. So they use rice where we use meal for both the sense of grain and of eating.
30:09 missed opportunity to call them precocious sandwiches.
"apple" as an all-rounder is still the case in french (and some regions of germany), where potatoes are earth-apples; pomme du terre and erdäpfel
This explains “mincemeat” that contains no meat at all and is sweet! Thanks!
But it used to.
@@christopherlawley1842 it did?
We call that "fruitmince", whilst "mincemeat" is minced fleshmeat
@@telemedic5142the "original" mincemeat (medieval era or thereabouts) was minced meat with various herbs and spices added. Over the course of time, the meat was replaced by dried fruit and the other ingredients that we (in the UK at least, I can't speak for other countries) recognise today.
That's one of the funniest and most informative TH-cam videos I have ever seen. Slainte.
Bread in Hebrew is “לחם”-spelled lekhem in English. The same word means meat in the local Palestinian Arabic (pronounced more like lakhem). The birthplace of Jesus Christ is Bethlehem (house of L*Kh*M) which means fought or battled. The fruit of the Malva plant is edible and called “Khubeiza” from the local word ‘bread’ in Arabic (khubez). The official name of the plant in Hebrew uses the rearranged letters Kh*L*M as Khelmit, but ask any Hebrew speaker what they’re chewing on and they’ll answer: “Lekhem Aravi” -Arab bread.
Is this related to the grain named - "Khamut" ?
In Australia, we have a similar term to Wegbier. A ‘roadie’ coming from ‘one for the road’ and you drink it to top you up until you reach the next pub or for your way home, but it’s usually just the last drink you have quickly before you leave the pub.
A roadie or traveller
is "season" (summer, spring) related to " to season" (add salt/pepper) ?
I thoroughly enjoy this podcast and I realize that a lot of our Swedish words are, of course, Germanic but also very close to those of old English.
Flour in Swedish is mjöl. Cooked pig, if you will, is fläsk. A meal, as served at the table, is a måltid.
I've tried so hard to not say this in the past, as I respect her so much as an author, a linguist, and a person, but Jess is so pretty!
She really is. Personally, I think these two are so adorable and cute
I don't want to appear creepy but I think Jess is absolutely gorgeous.
why say it now? We don't need to know what you think about her looks and I'm not being politically correct but it's just really odd since it's your person feelings about someone's appearance. I'd say it to a friend but why announce it to the world without anyone knowing who you are? I mean, what are you telling us?
@@johnboyd6943 Yeah, it makes you look creepy! We don't need to know what turns you on.
@@michaelashley2855 yeah, like fingernails on a blackboard or forks squeaking a cross a dinner plate! I put it down to too many woodburning stoves and firepits. You can't have people living too long now!
i love this show SO MUCH! you two are a great pair
Moist is a perfectly fine word, who wants dry cake?
From SE USA - we always called the mid day meal “lunch” and the evening meal “supper.” Supper was used interchangeably with dinner, but dinner more often was a special meal. Like Thanksgiving dinner or Christmas dinner. Our family called the main Sunday meal dinner and most often it was the only meal after breakfast that day. The rest of the day would be snacking on leftovers.
Horticulture school taught me that, scientifically, "fruit" refers to a fertilized and mature ovary of a plant. Grocers came up with common distinctions between "fruit" and "vegetable".
That makes berrys fruits, of cause, and also cucumbers.
in spanish we call chamomile manzanilla, a diminutive for the word manzana, meaning apple, so it was really interesting to know that chamomile came from the greek for earth apple. thanks!
and i’d be willing to bet tacos are called that cuz like the wadding in a musket, you’re stuffing the tortilla in a way
Botanist here: Pumpkins are berries.
Regarding the word "dinner" originally referring to the first meal of the day, that perfectly mirrors what happened in Portuguese.
Nowadays, the evening time meal corresponding to "dinner" is, in Portuguese, "jantar".
But originally "jantar" was the first meal of the day, then it moved to lunchtime (what we now call "almoço"), and finally it moved to the evening, replacing "ceia" (Portuguese for "supper") or at least pushing it to a later time.
Sweet potatoes aren't tubers. Tubers are modified stems (potatoes, on the other hand, ARE tubers), but sweet potatoes are modified roots. Both grow underground and store food so that the plant can use it later, but roots and stems are different things.
With fruits and veggies, you have to remember there are the botanical definitions and the culinary definitions. And the culinary definition changes with location. A tomato is a fruit because it contains the seeds (botanical) but we use it as a vegetable (culinary) in our cooking.
The modern Norwegian word for "meal" is "måltid".. as in "meal time", which apparently just means "time time"!
Incidentally it is now about time for a time time!
@@Vestlys1 More precisely, and etymologically related, meal-tide.
@@davidkantor7978
Fun fact: The Norwegian word for 'time' is.. 'tid'.. so that just brings it right back to time-time!
🤓
@@Vestlys1 We have Norwegian tid, and German zeit. How does a t or d become the m in time? Presumably, such a drift can happen, as time and zeit are reportedly related.
But interestingly, the word tide is closer to zeit and tid, and originally meant time. It persists in expressions such as Yule-tide.
Rob's reaction to ambrosia salad took me out 😂
Kiwi fruit used to be called “Chinese gooseberry” (and even further back was called mihoutao in Chinese- meaning “macaque fruit, because those monkeys loved it!)
@@kevinmcqueenie7420 I also heard at some point that it was a bit of a marketing thing, as "kiwi fruit" had an immediate identification with New Zealand.
I'm a New Zealander and I can confirm that the term "kiwifruit" didn't exist in my childhood. It was definitely invented for marketing purposes. It was meant to be a brand name unique to NZ, but someone screwed up and didn't secure all the necessary trademark rights, so it's become a generic term worldwide now.
Part 2 should definitely include all the pastas. lots are diminutives: little tongues, little strings, little cakes, little ears, little queens, little ribbons. there are also feathers/pens, spindles, priest stranglers, wraps, (angel) hair, butterflies, spirals, shells, barley/rice grains, brides/grooms, thimbles, twins, bells, big snails....
wonder what penne means 😳
I wanted to hear about pudding.
I used to be an ESL instructor and really wish I had access to you back then. My students would have found all this fascinating, or at least some of them. I certainly do! I am a Canadian from German/Austrian background who was born in Quebec and grew up mainly in Ontario. I love English and speak and understand German and French. Keep it up guys!