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Fancy that.
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Ketchup is a non-Newtonian fluid.
There. I said it. And I’m going to keep saying it until someone takes me seriously.
But what about “Catsup?”
When you say “the Diner on Highway 23” do you mean US-23? I ask because I’ve become more and more fascinated with the old US Highway system before the Interstate ever since I took a trip to Mobile, Alabama, and realized I was on the same highway (US-45) that goes through my home town in Illinois and started to wonder what all was in between. I then started tracking US-41 from Atlanta to Chicago (though I was wise enough to not stay on it the entire way). If so, then it’s cool that The Diner is on the same highway that I used to drive everyday to get to school in Georgia.
I remember how my mind was blown when I found out there was such a thing as non-tomato ketchup/catsup/kecap. It was like discovering there was life on other planets. From that day, nothing was ever the same.
Is that extra-fancy or standard?
It’s a stretch of road that has been renamed and reassigned over the years, so the part that runs to the Diner is a County, State, and US Highway, but not all three at the same time.
What would non-tomato ketchup be? I suspect that it’s not really ketchup, even if some people call it that. And the bottles/whatever likely don’t use that name either. Because the FDA et al would be all over them if they did.
When I visited the Philippines many years ago, where apparently growing tomatoes was more difficult – most “pizzas” I saw being made fresh had meat and cheese and onions and what-not, but no sauce at all – the common condiment in similar-shaped bottles was actually a spiced banana sauce, and it was called banana sauce. Not banana ketchup or “non-tomato ketchup” or anything like that.
Well, some think the word ketchup/catsup was derived from the Malay/Bahasa Indonesia word kecap (pronounced ketchup) which is a sauce, depending on its descriptor, that can be made up of several main ingredients. These range from different types of soy sauce to even fish sauces. Since the significant other is from Indonesia, we have several of these non-tomato ketchups in our pantry at all times.
And I think that brings us to the question of what makes a sauce a ketchup, and is it the exclusive domain of the tomato? I’m not sure that’s a world I want to live in.
The complaint about the pronunciation of ‘gif’ comes down to the mistaken idea that the pronunciation of an acronym is based on the pronunciation of the component words. Were that the case, here’s how we would pronounce a number of common terms:
Laser: lah-seer
Scuba: skubb-eh
NASA: nais-ah
Sonar: sow-neahr
SIM card : s-eye-m card
Respectfully, Peter, you’re making a mistake of the (p -> q) -> (~p -> ~q) variety.
The fact that LASER is not pronounced with the long E of “Emission” does not mean that GIF should not be pronounced with the hard G of Graphic.
Because, obviously, GIF should be pronounced with a hard G. (Apologies to Mr. Wilhite who, despite having invented the format, doesn’t have carte blanche to dictate its mispronunciation.)
Not sure if you know, but The Bleat comments are not there for me again. It was nice for the week that they did work, though. Thanks for trying.
Bless you James for fighting the “beg the question” fight. We might never win, but it must be fought.
Also, I never see anyone spell it out as LASER any more, to start with. It’s become just another word, in common usage.
You mean almond milk isn’t really milk? I’m shocked, shocked I say.
Except we always said Hard-G, until some people came along much later and went with the soft G.
Should be working now – I’m seeing them in Safari and Edge. May have used the previous busted code by mistake.
Hard-G “gif” means “graphic,” soft-G “gif” is pronounced “jif” and means “peanut butter.”
I am both a Hard-G and an OG and so Gansta that… okay, sorry couldn’t keep a straight face. Pasty white boy from Wisconsin checking in.
I squicked out my grandkids by calling some grape jelly, grape ketchup one time. I’m not sure what got them all askew but I found their responses hilarious…
I think it’s out along “old Highway 23” which means that somewhere there is a new Highway 23…