vegetable terms

[Alison Murie]

On May 14, 2010, at 3:43 PM, Geoff Nathan wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Geoff Nathan <geoffnathan at WAYNE.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: vegetable terms
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> This evokes one of my cookbook pet peeves. It is very difficult to
> find recipes for these things because cookbooks never agree on what
> to call them. Sometimes you can find them under 'beans, green/string/
> pole...', but other times under 'string' or 'green' or something.
> Just for fun I checked epicurious.com and found that 'string' and
> 'green' beans in 2 quick searches led to non-overlapping sets of
> recipes.
>
> Geoff
>
> Geoffrey S. Nathan
> Faculty Liaison, C&IT
> and Associate Professor, Linguistics Program
> +1 (313) 577-1259 (C&IT)
> +1 (313) 577-8621 (English/Linguistics)
>
> ----- "Charles Doyle" <cdoyle at UGA.EDU> wrote:
>
>> From: "Charles Doyle" <cdoyle at UGA.EDU>
>> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
>> Sent: Friday, May 14, 2010 3:30:36 PM GMT -05:00 US/Canada Eastern
>> Subject: vegetable terms
>>
>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>> -----------------------
>> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> Poster:       Charles Doyle <cdoyle at UGA.EDU>
>> Subject:      vegetable terms
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> In the American South, we commonly refer to green/string beans as
>> "snap beans" or "pole beans" (not parallel or distinguishing terms;
>> "snap" refers to the manner of preparation for cooking; "pole" refers
>> to the procedure for raising beans in the garden).
>>
>
~~~~~~~~~~~
Since seed developers have been creating more or less "stringless"
beans for some time, now, the change in the common name probably
reflects this and the desirability of a bean that doesn't require
stringing before cooking.
AM

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