The Food Network has 60 recipes for crudite. (They use the English alphabet there–none of them weird lookin’ letters.)
I wouldn’t look down on anybody for not knowing the word; I’m highly verbal & pick up lots of useless information. (I* do* look down on people who say “veggies” but I try to keep that to myself.)
If somebody got bent out of shape because they heard a word they did not understand, I would think they definitely had issues…
Lol…and one of the recipes is for a Crudite Platter from the show entitled, “How To Boil Water”, which answers one of the questions posted above…
Nevada. I’d never heard of it until I read the thread.
Though I’ve noticed that it’s now fallen into the general Dope collective knowledge.
Right up there with:
Here it certainly is. I wouldn’t think twice about using it in conversation, and I’d bet it’s far more recognized than crudite in this area. I mean, if you’ve ever had a gyros (which is almost a given in Chicago, unless you’re a vegetarian, and then you’re probably familiar with it as a dip), you almost definitely know what tzatziki is.
Anywhere I’ve ever bought a gyro, it has been referred to as a cucumber dressing.
I think you’ll find that’s a 1920s style death ray.
Why are you assuming that the people who know the word think that those who don’t are slack-jawed yokels? I don’t know your co-worker, but I certainly wouldn’t make the assumption that you were a slack-jawed yokel because you didn’t know it.
I have a pretty good vocabulary generally, but there are tons of different areas of subject matter where I am unfamiliar with vast swathes of vocabulary (auto parts and construction spring to mind, but there are tons of others). I had to ask my upstairs neighbor to explain himself half a dozen times when he was telling us what the roofing contractor said the building needed to have done and why, but it wouldn’t have occurred to me that he thought I was somehow an idiot for not knowing the terminology. And even if he did, well, tough shit - who cares?
That’s not me repeating what you said, Kaio, that’s me pointing out that the word ‘control’ here creates a Fallacy of the Excluded Middle.
So:
a) The word crudités is common in some places.
b) The word crudités is uncommon in other places.
Obviously this means that the a) people are pretentious, and that the b) people are slack-jawed yokels.
Got it.
Its clearly implied by all the sighing going on about having “dumb down” the English language because posters have suggested that using “crudites” outside of certain foodie circle is asking for confusion and the appearance of pretentiousness.
A poster in the other thread said he wouldn’t know what a coffee pot was because carafe is the only term that he knows for the object that collects percolating coffee. Now as bizarre as this statement is to me, I would never say that using “carafe” in favor of “coffee pot” when speaking to this poster on a level that he best understands constitutes dumbing down the language. It’s simply accomodating him as any polite speaker would do.
Seems to me that the “we’re dumbing down the language” lament is only voiced when where discussing words like “crudites”. That by itself suggest that we all know well and good what kind of value judgments are associated with people who don’t know these words.
Maybe it’s just me, so help me out here, what the devil are you trying to say here?
That ‘we all know’ people think we’re yokels if we don’t know the word? That without ‘dumbing down’ to, our perception of the vocabulary of our audience, we’re being perceived as pretentious?
Huh?
Are you from the Chicagoland area? If not, that was part of my point, what is one area’s or social circles “pretentious” may be the part of another’s everyday lexicon. We also call them “yee-ros” or “ghee-ros” around here, which I’m sure may sound affected and “pretentious” to those from, say, New York, where they pronounce the word as spelled in English (“JIE-roze”).
What are you going on about? Percolating coffee is made in a percolator, which is a kind of coffee pot. There isn’t a separate vessel that collects the coffee, it doesn’t even make sense given how percolators work.
A carafe (in the context of coffee) is the thing under a drip coffee maker, like a Mr Coffee, that collects coffee.
I know you are but what am I. Really, is that what you have fallen back on?
For one last time. No one has said that people are slack jawed yokels for not knowing what crudite is, but people have accused those who use the term as being pretentious.
Some people don’t remember the world before Mr Coffee. (Buy your replacement carafes & decanters here!) Actually, I knew some high-tone people back in the day who use Melitta coffee makers–which also included carafes. Glass carafes are breakable–hence the need for replacements.
But I well remember the electric percolators that made pretty good coffee quickly–& then boiled down the leftovers into sludge. Hey, stovetop percolators are the new/retro thing!
Former NFL football player from Indiana here and I always thought it was a really common word. We would use it all the time in the locker room after the game, as in “I wonder what kind of crudites we will be dining on from the buffet after the team meeting”?
I’m saying that “dumbing down the language” wouldn’t even make sense if it wasn’t implicitly understood that “crudites” and the like are words supposedly spoken by smart, classy folks. The implication is that by not using that word–to ensure effective communication–one would be appeasing dumb, slack-jawed yokels who are not up on their vocabulary.
If ~30% of the adult, literate, English-speaking population doesn’t know what “crudites” are (and it seems the poll bears this out), then I would say that routinely using this word to refer to raw carrots and celery is asking for some confusion if you’re talking to a generic, non-foodie audience. Do we all agree with this? In other words, almost 1 in 3 people will not understand what is meant by “I’ll be serving cruvites next week at the party”. To me, this suggests other ways of getting your point across might be advisable. Is this a controversial opinion?
I suspect the perception of pretentiousness wouldn’t be there if “crudites” refered to something more exotic and rare, like a special dish only found in the backwoods of Belgium or something. But raw veggies are almost comically mundane. Of all things on the planet, raw carrots and celery are something every person old enough to eat solid foods is familiar with, I reckon. So it’s not unreasonable to expect people to use equally familiar words when talking about these things. It’s not “dumbing down the language” to accomodate people’s expectations in this regard.
To further illustrate, it’s like choosing to call a library a bibliothèque. A lot people would deem that pretentious, even if that is not the speaker’s intent. It just comes across that way because it suggests the speaker feels a need to replace “library” with a more exotic word.
It’s common in the UK in restaurants.
I would consider it slightly pretentious if someone used it a home at a dinner party or in relation to their packed lunch. I think if I serving them at home I would just say I was serving some dips - and then they get either raw veg or crisps (c.f. potato chips)/tortilla or probably a choice of both to go with them.
Looking further up the thread, Tzatziki I would regards as a more common word than crudités. If someone said veggie tray I would probably guess they were North American or Australian and would suspect they were the same thing but not be completely sure.
This thread is much more interesting for what is says about the respondents, than the actual question in the OP.
It’s like nothing of the sort. English speakers don’t call libraries bibliotheques. And yet from this poll, over a third of English speakers on this board think that crudite *is *a common word.
Bibliothèque is French for “library.” In mostly-English-speaking countries, library is the word one uses.
Since before Julia Child, many French words have entered the vocabularies of English-speaking people who eat or prepare food. (“Foodies” had not been invented when Julia first appeared on our TV’s.) I find crudités rather dull but I will continue to use the words that are meaningful to me when discussing food. Not just French words; I like* tzatziki* & fajitas, too.
I’ll gladly explain any terms others don’t know; when I stop learning new words, send me to the Alzheimer’s ward. If they are offended by my not-at-all arcane knowledge, tough beans/frijoles.