4:03 p.m. - 2006-08-01
ribspear!
It's bonus entry day. 2 in like 1 hour. HOw exciting.
So, I was looking up recipes for spare ribs, because Kevin is cooking dinner for me tonight. He cooks pretty good. He makes a mean steak or grilled chicken. But the last time he made ribs, well, it was...umm. Not good. Raw and burnt in the same bite is always a little bit...upsetting. It's like, if it's just raw, you can cook it more, and if it's just burnt, sometimes you can scrape off the burned part. But when it's both raw and burned...well, it's time to heat up some pasta.
I was looking at the various recipe.com-esque sites so I could gently email him some cooking suggestions, and came across this little blurb, informing me about the origin of the term "spare ribs":
"Obviously the term spareribs does not refer to extra ribs. The term actually comes from the German Rippenspeer which literally translates to "spear ribs," as this cut was traditionally roasted on a spit or spear. In English, it became ribspare and eventually sparerib."
Now, here's my issue with this. Whenever you want to know why something is called something, and you look up this information, you are always given some story about how a word just suddenly and for no apparent reason changed. They try to sneak it in there, so you won't notice, but sometimes reading these explanations is like listening to a doped up hippie tell a story. "Wait, ok, wait....dude, it was like red....and then all of a sudden, it was like...totally...yellow." He can't tell you exactly when or why, but he's very enthusiastic about telling you the story.
Back to the spare ribs. So, according to this charming word lore, above, at some point it "went" from German to English, inexplicably changing from "spear" to "spare", and then in English, it changed from ribspare to sparerib.
JUST WHO IS DOING THIS??? Changing words around? And getting everyone to go along with it?
It would be like well, today this is called a Sandwich but I'm going to change it to Bandwich because I like that better and now we'll swtich it around and call it Wichband. Yes, that's much better.
"OK, Percy, draft the memo! Let everyone know we have, for all eternity, altered the name of that delicious bread snack we've all come to know and love."
