Sorry about the imprecise title, but that’s kind of my problem. You know how a matchbook isn’t really a book? I need a few examples of those. Thanks.
Grape-Nuts - it contains neither grapes, nor nuts. Discuss.
labor day
Good – I’m looking more for objects rather than brand names. But thank you. I bet I could think of a bunch of them if I didn’t need them.
A peanut is neither a pea nor a nut?
A “koala bear” is not a bear, but not sure how much they are called “bear” anymore.
That’s like what I’m looking for. Need several more like this. Thanks for helping.
Jumbo shrimp.
ETA: Hmmm… I take that back. However, why is it called a baseball park? A park has benches and trees and maybe a water fountain, places to play and toss a frisbee etc.
One parks in a driveway, but drives on a parkway.
Someone ought to ask Cecil why that is.
A coconut is not a nut.
It’s closer to being a park than what the Brits call a “car park.”
food stamps?
hot dogs?
pineapples?
Album, in the sense of recorded music.
Which arguably hasn’t actually been one since the days of 78s, and is now being applied to downloads.
sweetbreads
Sweetbreads (thymus and pancreas) are certainly not bread and are not very sweet.
ETA: Damn it. Beaten to the punch again.
Mincemeat pie apprently has no meat in it.
Peanuts
How about the television “dial”? You know, the one they’re always telling us not to touch…Do they even do that anymore, or am I just getting that old?
Technically, a “battery” is a collection of electrochemical cells (“battery” basically means an assemblage of units), but the term is generally used to refer to a single cell.
The U.S. five-cent piece known as the “nickel” is composed of 25% nickel and 75% copper.
Head cheeseain’t cheese. (Of course, toe jam ain’t jam either, but that’s slang.)
There’s a whole list of animals but the only one I can think of now is the Naked Mole Rat – it’s none of the three (“naked” = hairless)
Egg cream
But I think a modern album of downloads is probably closer to the original meaning. Before there was recorded music, an album was a book in which you put a collection of objects you wanted to save. (A meaning that still exists in a photo album.)
A vinyl LP may have been a collection of songs for you to keep but it wasn’t a group that you had collected. A download album is your collection of songs.
The Holy Roman Empire did not include the city of Rome through most of its existence.