Hors d'oeuvres. This is a hard word to spell. I had to go to dictionary.com and look up synonyms for "appetizer" to figure out how it's spelled. Stupid fucking French. But now I know. Hors d'oeuvres. Does anyone know what this literally translates to?
4 comments:
OK, as far as I can tell, it's something like "outside of work." What?
hors d'ouevre literally means "outside of the work", where "the work" is in the sense of like "a work of art." i think its cause in the old days the appetizers were done outside of the kitchen by people who were not the main cooks, thus it was separate from the main body of work, which was the meal.
Thanks Heather! Leave it to the chef to know the answer :)
If you knew only a little French, you might interpret this phrase as meaning “out of work,” but in fact it means little snack foods served before or outside of (“hors” ) the main dishes of a meal (the “oeuvres” ). English speakers have trouble mastering the sounds in this phrase, but it is normally rendered “or-DERVES,” in a rough approximation of the original. Mangled spellings like “hors’dourves” are not uncommon. Actually, many modern food writers have decided we needn’t try to wrap our tongues around this peculiar foreign phrase and now prefer starters.”
From: http://www.wsu.edu:8080/~brians/errors/hors.html
Post a Comment