"Word" words?

[Doug Harris]

Perhaps not. But there was, once upon a Catskills time, a borscht belt.

And a joke from same:

The old gentleman sat at the same table daily for years, lunching
always on exactly the same items, starting with a soup that was,
for all intents and purposes, the same from day to day.
One day he calls over the waiter -- the same one who'd been serving
him lunch for ten years. "Taste the soup," the old gent says.
"But Mr. Bernstein," the waiter responded, "the soup is the same one
you've been having daily for years."
"Taste the soup," demanded Mr. Bernstein.
"But Mr. Bernstein. . . "
After several rounds of this, the waiter gave in, and agreed to taste
the soup.
After a moment, the puzzled waiter said, "Where's the spoon?"
"Ah HAAA," exclaimed Bernstein.
dh

Scot LaFaive wrote:

> Any comments? Is there a katana sword, an ushanka hat, or borscht soup?

It seems to me that these are very common. Isn't that also like
appending "pasta" after various Italian pasta name types (e.g.
spaghetti pasta)? I would imagine language users do that because the
borrowed word isn't transparent like it is in the native language.

Scot

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