Pommes frites

[Benjamin Barrett]

Bwahaha. I sit corrected. (I believe the gravity in such places is so strong, however, that not even light can escape.)

I assume in "Time After Time," the expression is used for comic effect or to indicate displacement in time-space.

Benjamin Barrett
Seattle, WA

On Jan 22, 2012, at 10:47 AM, Dan Goncharoff wrote:

> I have never eaten fast food in Paris, but when I moved to Germany, around
> 1991, french fries at Mickey Ds were called "pommes frites".
>
> DanG
>
>
> On Sun, Jan 22, 2012 at 1:41 PM, Jim Parish <jparish at siue.edu> wrote:
>
>>
>> Benjamin Barrett wrote:
>>> The OED says that pommes frites are potato chips; the AHD doesn't have =
>>> it.
>>>
>>> As Barry Popik points out in 2003 =
>>> (
>> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/wa?A2=3Dind0303D&L=3DADS-L&P=3DR=
>>> 3392&I=3D-3&X=3D5A86CF318F261388B0), the word has meant "French fries" =
>>> at least since 1997, perhaps as a translation from Belgian French. There
>> =
>>> is a discussion at http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/544084 as to
>> whether =
>>> there is a difference between pommes frites and French fries (Wikipedia =
>>> doesn't think so: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pommes_frites).
>>>
>> For what it's worth, the H. G. Wells character in "Time After Time"
>> (1979) uses the phrase during his
>> first visit to McDonald's.
>>
>> Jim Parish

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