the language of food

Susie Dent is one of Britain's top 'lexicographers' and appears on TV.
She also writes regularly for the Independent and i newspapers:

Bellygods and gigoles tell our story in food

English is richly seasoned with words forged at the table

• Susie Dent
• Sunday 24 February 2013 01:00 

As a lexicographer on Countdown, I spend a lot of time researching the history of words, and two news stories – the horsemeat scandal and the obesity epidemic – show the extent to which food has shaped our language. The meat scandal has been called a shambles, and the word is entirely appropriate. The "shambles" were the bloodied stalls of medieval butchers –all that carnage led to our use of the word for something messed up.

For the Anglo-Saxons, food determined a person's position in society. The words "lord" and "lady" began as the hláfweard and hlæfdige, or loaf-keeper and loaf-kneader. A servant, conversely, was a dependent, so the hláf-æta – bread-eater: he also subsisted on the "umbles" or cheap offcuts – the origin of the expression "humble pie". A "pittance" was originally a small portion of food allowed to a monk or poor person. Some masters were more generous: to "foster" first meant to feed someone – an idea that's retained in our word "helping" for a serving of food. A "companion" was someone you broke bread (pane) with (com), and a "mate" a comrade at your "mess", or table.

Food as a determiner of status continued as English and society evolved. After 1066, the conquered Britons tended the sheep, pigs, and cows (names rooted in Anglo-Saxon), while the Norman elite ate the results – mutton, pork and beef all come from the French.

Bellygods and gigoles tell our story in food | The Independent

It's so comforting to return to the language of childhood, so let's make a whim-wham for the waterwheel

The vocabulary from home, that we grew up with, somehow feels important now

By Susie Dent

Monday, 6th April 2020, 6:30 pm

“Not just now. I’m making a whim-wham for waterwheels.”

If home-schooling parents ever needed an excuse to avoid calculating the area of a parallelogram or putting a long piece of prose into the present perfect, this would once have been it.

A Northamptonshire substitute for “I’m busy”, it was once the ideal, mysterious fob-off for any child wanting attention...

So why be just “hungry” when we can be pined or gant (Yorkshire), hearty (Worcestershire), jimp (Aberdeen), clemt (Lancashire), wallow (Cumbria), famelled or famished (South-East), or sinking (Sussex)?

And why simply be cold when we could be nithered, hunchy,  shrammed, mopy, or perishing instead?

Susie Dent: It's so comforting to return to the language of childhood, so let's make a whim-wham for the waterwheel | inews
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