ADS-L Digest - 15 Jun 2005 to 16 Jun 2005 (#2005-168)

[Laurence Horn]

At 11:23 AM -0400 6/17/05, Geoff Nathan wrote:
>At 12:01 AM 6/17/2005, you wrote:
>>Well, at least the avocado in California rolls is still real.  The
>>"crabmeat" is usually imitation, though (crab-colored pollock or
>>whatever).  American ingenuity!
>
>Sorry, Larry, but in this case it's Japanese ingenuity, since the
>"crabmeat" is a Japanese invention, called surimi, a compound of /suru/
>'do, process' and /mi/ 'meat' (I'm not sure whether this is a borrowing of
>English 'meat' or a native Japanese word, and don't have a proper Japanese
>dictionary available).  I believe the Japanese had been using this stuff
>for a while before it made its way to American shores.
>
Good point, Geoff.  I knew about surimi being Japanese (since I buy
the stuff myself, I confess), but hadn't realized that the etymology
was < suru + mi.  Or that it wouldn't be sacrilegious (now *that's* a
word that ends up subject to widespread eggcornization as
"sacreligious", probably more often than not*) for echt Japanese
sushi, as opposed to the California knock-off, to substitute surimi
for crab.  (I've only seen surimi fish--pseudo-crab, pseudo-lobster,
etc.--never surimi meat.  Perhaps the latter isn't exported here?)

L


*less often than not, by Google evidence:

sacrilegious 186,000
sacreligious   37,800