Cream of tartar. (Unless there’s a an alternate meaning of the word “cream” that I’m missing?)
And sweetmeats are sweet but hopefully do not contain meat.
Well, mincemeat did always used to include meat, and now properly includes beef suet, which could be considered meat in a sense.
steak house
Hot Plate
Usually true, but not always.
The usual joke is that it was was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire.
Sea lions are not lions (neither are ant lions). Sea cucumbers are not cucumbers (or even vegetables).
Actually there is a whole bunch of sea __ things: anenomes, hares…
A soap opera is not an opera, and rarely involves soap.
Pocketbook
Notebook
English muffin
Lead (in pencil)
Keyboard
Mouse
Cheesecake is actually pie.
When come back, bring cheesecake.
Military intelligence.
This opens the door too dozens if not scores of geographically-incorrect foodstuff names.
Just to name a few:
Hollandaise sauce is French.
Philadelphia cream cheese was invented in New York City.
Texas Pete is made in North Carolina.
Chicken Kiev has nothing to do with Kiev.
Picadilly Circus (in London… is circular, but ain’t no circus)
Times Square (in NY—is a triangle)
I have books that I take notes in.
And keys are indeed arrayed in a board before me.
Nor any mints.
A monk once remarked to me about the Sisters of Mercy, “They’re neither”.
Used to be we knew panda bears weren’t really bears. Upon further analysis, they actually are. But now they’re not really pandas.
City chicken, which usually comes from pigs (or possibly calves).
I’m sure many have asked Cecil, but this was answered many times:
Drive-way - historic usage = a lane or path from the road to the main manor or the carriage house (were you’d leave your carriage, horseless or not), as land parcels shrunk, and the carriage house morphed into a Garage (or was dispensed with altogether), well the (now much shorter) ribbon of concrete/asphalt where you drive up and park your vehicle kept it name…
Parkways - historic again = road landscaped to give a drive-thru-a-park experience (Parkways are more or less linear parks) - I think of Fred Olmsted and his landscaping of 19th century New York, but I’m sure Parkways existed in some form way before that for the European Royalty and their carriages…
The creatures known as fireflies, lighning bugs, or (in their larval stage) glowworms are properly neither flies, bugs, nor worms, but beetles.
So are ladybugs. Mayflies, dragonflies, and butterflies are not flies. (Nor are they dragons, nor made of butter.)
A cockroach has nothing whatsoever to do with either chickens or male genitalia.
Hot dog.
Hamburger.
English muffins are the things that are known as muffins in England (as sold by the muffin man, who lives down Drury Lane). This is a thing that is exactly what its name says it is.