Does it count if it’s actually meant as an insult? Like calling alcoholic drinks “Dutch courage”?
Oh, there was a GQ thread just recently talking about the fruit called “kaffir limes”. Apparently it’s not universally considered offensive but you’re safer saying “makrut limes”.
Cooked chicken’s tail is a “Pope’s nose” (more PC version “parson’s nose”), and potatoes were “Irish grapes” or “Irish apples”.
I’m not entirely sure about the slurriness of “Jew butter” as a term for goose-grease shortening: to the extent that it was probably actually used by Jews as a butter substitute with meat-based meals (on account of not being allowed to eat meat and dairy at the same meal), then it might have been meant literally as “a butter substitute used by Jews”.
I am, however, 100% sure about the slurfulness of the phrase “n*****s in a snowstorm” for stewed prunes and rice.
I live a few blocks from a Bimbo commercial bakery. It’s the Wonder Bread of Mexico. I’m impressed the company has gotten a toe-hold in the US (I’d be impressed even if their name were PC in English). And it’s not like they are catering to the Latino population; there isn’t much of one in western Wisconsin. They are, I think, genuinely competing with Wonder Bread and the like.
Not sure where in Western Wisconsin you are, but there is actually a huge Mexican population in Monroe County at least (specifically the Norwalk/Sparta/Rockland area).
I remember being told Brazil nuts were known as n-ers toes as a child, but I don’t believe that was ever an official name.
Recently, Mom accidentally slipped up and referred to “nigger toes,” and then totally freaked out that she let that word come out of her mouth. Fortunately, I was the only one in the room at the time.
I’ve joked that Kraft’s Cheese Nips are every bit as good as Kellogg’s Cheez-its and that Cheese Nips are only held back back their racist name.
Of course, I’ve never heard anyone other than myself complain that Cheese Nips are racist and I only say it as a joke.
A friend of mine tells the story about another friend who was possibly having an allergic reaction to them and no one knew the actual proper name of the nut to tell the doctor (and were naturally loathe to speak up with the slang term).
I haven’t heard ‘Nips’ used to refer to Japanese much. McHale’s Navy was probably the major source for this I’ve heard in my lifetime. ‘Japs’ would be more common, and that’s kind of rare also. I’d guess ‘Chinese’ or some other reference to Chinese people is the term I hear most often to describe Japanese people, aside from ‘Japanese’ itself.
I didn’t realize as a kid when the ‘Frito Bandito’ controversy arose that the term was in use before it was used as the name of the character marketing corn chips.
They’ve all over the US, just not with the Bimbo name. But they now own the trademarks to Sara Lee, Thomas’, Arnold, Beefsteak (bread), Entenmann’s, Freihofers, Boboli, and many others. There’s really no need for them to establish the company name.
There used to be Ayds Diet Candy, part of the Ayds Reducing plan. In the 80s, they saw sales drop precipitously and are now out of business.
In German, there’s ‘Zigeunerschnitzel’, literally ‘gypsy schnitzel’ (is ‘schnitzel’ the proper English word to use here, btw? Perhaps escalope?), more accurately ‘schnitzel à la zingara’, which has stirred up some controversy.
Oh, and of course, chocolate-coated marshmallows used to be called ‘Negerkuss’, i.e. ‘nigger’s kiss’.
I remember seeing cans of Niggerhead Oysters on grocery shelves when I was a kid. They changed their name to Negrohead in the 60s, and then I guess they went out of business.
Cannola Oil is naturally made from the seeds of the cannola plant which used to be called rape. I remember when I was young hearing about rape seeds. Apparently their still called that in some parts of the world.