Heard on The Doctors: _bug juice_

Arnold Zwicky zwicky at STANFORD.EDU
Thu Mar 15 16:07:05 UTC 2012


On Mar 15, 2012, at 8:56 AM, Victor Steinbok wrote:

> Mystery meat is well entrenched in school cafeteria and well before my
> time. In fact, I suspect that HDAS is off by 20-30 years at least, but I
> have not investigated.
>
>     VS-)
>
> On 3/15/2012 11:45 AM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
>> "Mystery meat":  HDAS: 1968 (nearly 100 years earlier as plain "mystery").
>>
>> JL
>>
>> On Thu, Mar 15, 2012 at 11:16 AM, Victor Steinbok<aardvark66 at gmail.com>wrote:
>>
>>> I thought it was "mystery meat"--also used on one of the Top Chef shows
>>> when the meat was overcooked, making it unidentifiable....
>>>     VS-)

it was common when i was a freshman at Princeton (1958-59), and i gathered that the usage came from prep school usage from some time before.  so, like VS, i imagine it could be taken taken back to at least the 1940s.

arnold

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