"Word" words?

[Dave Wilton]

"Scrod" is not necessarily cod. It is a term meaning a generic white fish,
used by restaurants on menus so they have flexibility depending on what
happens to be cheap at the fish market that particular morning. Scrod is
often cod, but it can also be haddock, pollock, or various other fish.

And I have never heard "scrodfish" either.




-----Original Message-----
From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf Of
Laurence Horn
Sent: Monday, April 28, 2008 8:32 AM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: Re: "Word" words?

At 11:58 PM -0400 4/27/08, James Harbeck wrote:
>>One of the few pleasures of living on the East Coast is being able to
>>use "tunafish," again.
>
>Go farther east to Newfoundland and you'll encounter a new style of
>meaning for "fish". In Nfld, "fish" means "cod" and every other fish
>is specified. I was in a restaurant in St. John's and asked about one
>menu item, "What kind of fish is it?" The answer was "Fresh." The
>alternative, as it happens, would have been "Salt." Cod can be either
>fresh or salted. But if it weren't cod, they would have said so in
>the first place.
>
Nice to know.  And for us non-Nufis, "codfish" is another instance of
the phenomenon under discussion.  Curiously, though, *"scrodfish" is
not--at least I've never heard it, even though scrod is a kind of cod
(when it isn't figuring as the imperfect subjunctive of a certain
verb in the punch line of a certain joke).

LH

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