dark meat的词源

英文词源

meat (n.)

Old English mete "food, item of food" (paired with drink), from Proto-Germanic *mati (cognates: Old Frisian mete, Old Saxon meti, Old Norse matr, Old High German maz, Gothic mats "food," Middle Dutch, Dutch metworst, German Mettwurst "type of sausage"), from PIE *mad-i-, from root *mad- "moist, wet," also with reference to food qualities, (cognates: Sanskrit medas- "fat" (n.), Old Irish mat "pig;" see mast (n.2)).

Narrower sense of "flesh used as food" is first attested c. 1300; similar sense evolution in French viande "meat," originally "food." In Middle English, vegetables still could be called grene-mete (15c.). Figurative sense of "essential part" is from 1901. Dark meat, white meat popularized 19c., supposedly as euphemisms for leg and breast, but earliest sources use both terms without apparent embarrassment.

The choicest parts of a turkey are the side bones, the breast, and the thigh bones. The breast and wings are called light meat; the thigh-bones and side-bones dark meat. When a person declines expressing a preference, it is polite to help to both kinds. [Lydia Maria Child, "The American Frugal Housewife," Boston, 1835]

First record of meat loaf is from 1876. Meat-market "place where one looks for sex partners" is from 1896 (meat in various sexual senses of "penis, vagina, body regarded as a sex object, prostitute" are attested from 1590s; Old English for "meat-market" was flæsccyping ('flesh-cheaping')); meat wagon "ambulance" is from 1920, American English slang, said to date from World War I (in a literal sense by 1857). Meat-grinder in the figurative sense attested by 1951. Meat-hook in colloquial transferred sense "arm" attested by 1919.

中文词源

dark meat：深色肉；(家禽等的)腿肉

在英国维多利亚时代leg和 breast曾被当做禁忌语，人的"腿"不说leg而说limb,“喂奶”不说breast-feed而说nurse。据说当时的名媛淑女对这两个词极为敏感。假若有人把limb of a piano 误称为leg of a piano，她们就会顿时惊愕得花容失色。这也许有点言过其实。受美洲殖民时代清教徒的礼教传统以及道德观念的影响，在美国英语中"(家禽等的)腿肉"该说为dark meat, "(家禽等的)胸肉”用white meat,也就是说dark meat和 white meat原来是用于委婉语。人们之所以用dark和white是因为这两个部位的肉烹制好之后分别为深色和白色的缘故。dark meat和white meat如今仍在经常使用，但已不再被作为委婉语了，而被看做描写性词语了。

该词的英语词源请访问趣词词源英文版：dark meat 词源，dark meat 含义。