Greek food & drink (from Santorini)

Laurence Horn laurence.horn at YALE.EDU
Wed May 10 19:18:44 UTC 2006


>Greetings again from Santorini. From various beach restaurants here:
>...
>SCALLOPINE MEXICAN WOMAN
>FILET BEEF MEXICAN WOMAN
>HAMBURGER MEXICAN WOMAN--One restaurant had all three of these.
>"Mexican Woman"??
>
This is a lovely eggcorn--a (mis)translation of "alla mexicana" or "à
la mexicaine" or some such cognate, I'd wager.  The feminine ending
is of course originally for an adjective modifying the feminine noun
"style", but it's been reanalyzed as if the "Mexicana" were a
feminine noun.

LH

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