This is Ferdinand
MUNDANE MYSTERIES: How To Pronounce “Caramel” Correctly
Thanks to the intricacies of our amazing English language, one thing is all but guaranteed: more often than not, we’re all going to mispronounce a word (or twelve). Because of the complexity of American English, how a word is spelled doesn’t always exactly indicate how it’s supposed to sound. And that can cause some embarrassment when you try to pronounce a word that you’ve only ever read but have never had to say aloud. Then, on top of that complexity, there’s the confusion that arises when a word has significantly different pronunciations across various regions of the country. Like the word “caramel”. It’s spelled the same, regardless of where you are. But how do you say it correctly?
There are at least two definitive pronunciations of caramel used here in the U.S. For most folks in the Southeast & on the East Coast, the brown, chewy candy is usually called CARE-uh-mull. For most folks from western & northern U.S., the middle syllable gets dropped altogether, so they pronounce it CAR-mull. Meanwhile, over in the UK, they tend to favor the southern/east coast pronunciation, but with a twist, pronouncing the first syllable as care (as in care-a-mel), but the last syllable as MELL.
But with multiple pronunciations of the word in our overly complex English language, it’s not always obvious which one might be correct. The middle-syllable droppers and the every-syllable-pronouncers may insist that their way is THE correct method, the truth is: both pronunciations are actually acceptable.
How is that possible? That there are two wholly correct ways to say the same word? Well, it comes down to majority rule. The overall English-speaking public decides how & when words are used, not linguists or dictionary makers. As a matter of fact, because both pronunciations of caramel are so popular, the dictionary makers at Merriam-Webster’s actually include both pronunciations in its entry for the word.
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House of the Week – 4/8/22
MUNDANE MYSTERIES: Why Are There Eight Buns For Ten Hot Dogs?
Shopping for hot dogs can be frustrating, because the dogs, themselves, are usually sold in packs of 10…but the buns are sold in packs of 8! Why in the world do we have to endure this unequal dog-to-bun ratio?
The National Hot Dog & Sausage Council (which is a real thing) asserts that the disparity exists because of…reasons. To begin with, pretty much no hot dog distributor makes buns & virtually no hot dog bun manufacturer makes hot dogs.
So, let’s look at the industries individually. Why are hot dogs sold in packs of 10? Because that’s the amount that meat producers chose back in the 1940s, around the time hot dogs became available for purchase at retail grocery stores. Because of how meat was usually priced then, the longtime leader of direct-to-consumer hot dogs, Oscar Mayer, would sell hot dogs by the pound. So, ten dogs, weighing 1.6 ounces each, became the ideal product weight distribution.
Bakeries, on the other hand, have had their own different standards. Why are hot dog buns usually sold 8 to a pack? Because the companies’ baking trays are & have typically been sized for that amount, with 2 sets of 4 buns coming off the tray at a time (which is why, as you’ve probably noticed before when you’ve opened a fresh bag, many buns are still stuck together).
The two groups’ standards were instituted independently of one another. There’s not consortium of bakers & dog makers. Bakeries didn’t care about what the hot dog makers were doing when the bakers settled on their 4-roll tray standards. And hot dog producers didn’t consider the difficulty bakeries might have in disrupting their conveyor systems’ flows to offer ten buns per package.
Yes, I know it can be irritating for the numbers to not match up when you only need to buy one or two packages of each. But for the record, if you buy four packs of hot dogs & five packs of buns, you’ll end up with forty matching pairs. That is, if you’re able to stomach that level of hot dog hell. Paging Joey Chesnut!
Got a Mundane Mystery you’d like solved? Send me a message via Twitter (@AndyWebbRadio), or shoot me an email at [email protected].
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House of the Week – 4/1/22
MUNDANE MYSTERIES: What Does “Spick & Span” Actually Mean?
It’s Springtime again! And that means it’s time for “spring cleaning”, in the hopes of making your home, car, office, etc., look super clean & like new. Your goal should be to make your place look “spick & span”, you might say. But what does that even really mean, “spick & span”?
The full phrase was actually “spick & span new”. Before originally, it started as just “span-new”, first used as far back as the early 14th century. “Span-new” was derived from the Old Norse term “spán-nýr“: spán meant “chip” (as in a wood chip); nýr meant “new”. So basically, “span-new” meant “as new as a freshly cut wood chip”.
Spick, on the other hand, is thought to have come from several old words that all meant “nail” or “related to a spike”. Across the various spellings of “spick” across Middle Swedish, Dutch, and also Old Norse, the word was used pretty much the same way “span-new” was used in English, as a way to describe something so pristine that it had to have been newly created.
Somewhere along the way, our English-speaking forebearers blended the two expressions to create “spick & span new”. Sir Thomas North was the first person that we’re aware of who used the phrase, including it in his 1579 translation of Plutarch’s Lives of the Noble Grecians & Romans. As time passed, however, the “new” eventually got cut. The first usage of the phrase “spick & span” as we know it today was a diary entry by writer Samuel Pepys from 1665, where he wrote of his friend, Lady Batten, as she was “walking through the dirty lane with new spick & span white shoes.”
The original intent of the phrase was actually in reference to things that were genuinely new. But over the years, the expression’s meaning has relaxed to mean anything that appears to be in its original condition. So, when you say something is “spick & span” now, it’s understood that you aren’t really implying that it’s brand new, merely that it looks like it’s never been used. So, now that you know why we say it…good luck making it a reality in your spring cleaning projects!
Got a Mundane Mystery you’d like solved? Send me a message via Twitter (@AndyWebbRadio), or shoot me an email at [email protected].
SPONSORED BY: Berryville Graphics