Eat Your Words
You probably know this, but I write about food. Without going into too much detail, my dissertation (in its beginning stages) focuses on American literary texts from the 20th century to the present, emphasis on the present. All kinds of texts, from male and female writers from all kinds of cultural backgrounds: what the texts have in common is a richly imagined relationship with food. My work offers a reading of the food scenes in these texts, which (meaning the texts and/or the scenes) are often minimized or overlooked – and I will also offer an argument that food practices are actually pretty integral to the way individuals shape their identity. That’s the short version.
Since I began my project, my committee chair has become increasingly self-conscious about puns. He performs this in written communication by inserting “Uh” or “um” before he indulges in a food metaphor. “Let me, uh… digest this,” he says. Or, “let’s see what else is on the menu, so to speak.” Early on, he lamented that the topic would force him to overindulge in punnetry; I told him that we wouldn’t even consider these things to be puns if I had a different topic. It’s my focus that creates the punny extra shade of meaning to those idioms, otherwise they would just be ordinary turns of phrase.
It’s true. Food and eating metaphors for reading and learning are ubiquitous, absolutely integral to how we understand those processes. We might devour books, digest them if they are good, regurgitate their content on an exam. To eat up someone else’s words, like devourment, suggests that the words are delicious or at least that you were hungry for them; to eat your own words, though, suggests force-feeding, something that you have to swallow and don’t want to. (This makes me feel perverse for re-reading my own writing, actually; if I devour my old journals, revisiting past selves I’ve been, is this eating my own words?)
So let me hear the idioms you use that evoke or explicit refer to food, eating, and cooking. This is not for my project: I’m in the business of analyzing literary texts, not colloquialisms, and anyway if I just wanted to collect idioms I am sure there is a comprehensive list of them somewhere on paper or the web. This is just for fun, and curiousity. I’m interested in your idioms, specifically – things that you say, or that other people have said to you, and what they meant to you. So as you think of them or hear them, pass them along to me! I’ll start with the ones that I used in this post and in recent posts.
Reading
to devour a book – to read rapaciously, as though hungry or greedy
to regurgitate (on a test) – Several of my high school teachers were fond of using this gross phrase when they wanted us to repeat precisely what we’d been told.
Thinking
Let me digest this/ I need to digest this – suggests a process of breaking something down, presumably into more understandable parts
I was stewing – (1) I was thinking some things over, waiting for an idea to emerge. This phrase makes me think of Emeril putting a lid on a pot, saying he’s giving the ingredients time to “get married”… to mingle together and become unified. (2, suggested by bekitty) to brood on something too long, like steeping tea until it is bitter. Related to:
to stew in your own juice – (suggested by Maud) to sit in a mess of your own makingto ruminate – to mull over. This is not exactly an idiom, but I use it all the time… and I giggle whenever I see cattle referred to as ruminants, because it makes them sound thoughtful. But the root means to chew.
Speaking
eat your words – take back what you said. Related to:
eat crow (suggested by Siobhan) and eat humble pie, meaning to admit that you were wrong.Get to the meat of the matter – (suggested by Siobhan) Get to the point, get to the real meaning. Meaning is often referred to a meat.
Butter wouldn’t melt in his/her mouth – (suggested by Maud) He or she appears to be so sweet and innocent.
Acting
What else is on the menu? – when my chair said this, he was asking for a chapter outline; he wanted to see all the books I intend to analyze and the ideas I am using the frame them. My prix fixe, so to speak. But this phrase could also be used to request what else I have on offer. If a novel seems to incorporate conventions from romance, mystery, and sci fi genres, I might say that novel has all those things on the menu.
Now you’re cooking with gas! – (suggested by Maud) Now you’re doing really well/ now you’ve gotten going!
Attracting
I could sop you up with a biscuit – (suggested by Margaret) You are so sweet, or adorable, or something very good that should be enjoyed completely. Possibly regional. Related to the more common:
I could eat you up with a spoon – (suggested by Maud)to butter up – to sweet-talk someone, to compliment them in order to make things go smoother
to know which side your bread is buttered on – (suggested by Siobhan) to know that your allegiance is to the person who benefits you
There are many, but the one that leaps most immediately to mind is the phrase “I could sop you/him/her up with a biscuit,” meaning that a person is sweet (like molasses, hence the origin), or attractive, or that you really enjoy their company. I mostly heard it said by the women in my family, almost never men. I never thought it was an odd phrase until I said it to someone in Memphis and they looked at me like my skull was on inside out.
I’d always thought of the phrase “I was stewing” to be more to do with a pot of tea. You know, going over and over something negatively, so the only real result is bitterness.
Margaret, I think I’ve heard that – possibly from you! But it doesn’t seem terribly strange, it’s kind of like “I could just eat you up.” What’s weird about that is that people often say it to/about children. Eating babies! Totally normal!
bekitty, you are quite right, that is another connotation of stew and probably the more common one. But since I’m a big maker of soups, my mind always goes to the other place.
Similarly, people say, “I could eat him/her up with a spoon” of someone you find, well, delectable. And I had an old boyfriend who used to say, “Now you’re cooking with gas,” meaning whatever you were doing was really going well. I suppose that stems from the time when gas stoves were new and considered much more modern and efficient. Also, jazz musicians used to say someone was really cooking when their playing was particularly inspired.
The discussion of stewing reminds me of one I’ve never really understood the foundation of: to let someone stew in their own juices. This is said disapprovingly, and seems to suggest leaving someone in a mess of his/her own making, but that seems rather inapt, since food stewing in its own juices doesn’t seem like a bad thing. Unless the idea is food that stews in it’s own juices and nothing else, and therefore lacks flavor? Moisture? I’m lost.
Maud – my gram says “now we’re cooking with gas” all the time, which I think is adorable. I also wondered about its origin, because I’m not really sure what kind of stoves were available before gas. I mean, coal? Are we talking that old?
But re: stewing, you make a good point… when I say I’m stewing in relation to my work, I’m really talking about that tasty kind of stew, where sitting in my own juice (er, so to speak) is really helping me develop complexity and flavor. But I suppose that if one is producing bitter or toxic thoughts, stewing in one’s own juice would just compound the problem. Gross, I don’t know. Strange that the common usage would be the negative version.
always been a fan of the chiding ‘don’t butter your bread on both sides’ and always disliked ‘the cream of the crop’ because… what sorta crop has cream in it? referring somehow to creamed corn being better than non? some bastardization of cream rises to the top? bleh.
“Eat Crow.”
“There’s more ways to kill a cat than choking it with butter”
“Know which side your bread is buttered on”
“Get to the meat of the matter”
Tanglethis – What you say about stewing in one’s own juices makes sense. It is used when someone is in a bad situation of her/his own making, and therefore would be producing “bitter or toxic thoughts,”
as you say. It is odd that the negative is the common usage; the expression must have been started by a bad cook!
Also, this morning, “butter wouldn’t melt in her/his mouth” occurred to me. It’s used to describe a kind of innocent appearance, rather smug perhaps, that the speaker sees as a facade. I’ve seen some debate about how it came to mean that, since it’s not at all obvious. I’ve always associated it with the idea that someone is being so coolly disingenuous that they’re suspected of having an unnaturally low internal temperature, but I have no idea what it’s origin is historically.
I had to organize these a little, they were getting unwieldy.
ecentipede – what does “don’t butter your bread on both sides” mean? I agree that cream of the crop awkward, seems like a mixed metaphor (cream in milk rises to the top, but milk isn’t exactly a crop…)
Siobhan – the choking a cat with butter one confuses me. It also seems like a mixed metaphor: it’s similar to “more than one way to skin a cat,” but choking on butter is like too much of a good thing. So… there’s more than one way to conquer something/one than by giving it/them too much of a good thing?
Maud – I’ve always puzzled over butter in the mouth, too, and had come to a similar conclusion. Possibly in a context where coolness indicates innocence or purity in the same way that heat indicates passions of various sorts.
I’ll also take suggestions for definitions, folks. No one will hire me at Mirriam-Webster for these awkward sentences.
it means don’t be greedy–if you butter your bread on both sides you might drop it, and at the least you’ll have greasy fingers…