"Tuna fish" - why aren't any other kinds of fish redundant?

“Grape fruit” :wink:

What has two knees and swims? tunny fish.

I keep my tuna fish in my cherrywood cabinet.

silverfish (an insect), crayfish

I think from now on when I order a turkey sandwich I will say I want a “turkey-bird” sandwich so they won’t get it confused with the country.

How on earth will you order chili?

Although fish wiggle, in a loose manner of speaking, the second fish is left off of tuna wiggle, so in a sense they should use “fish” to make the point of the dish clear.

Jessica Simpson once famously asked if she was eating chicken or fish when chowing into a tin of tuna. It seems the brand name was chicken of the sea and it was more than enough to confuse her. Her husband wasn’t able to help her.
And that’s what reality tv does for you.

I think I agree with RealityChuck here. I hear the term ‘tuna fish’ most often from the older generations. I remember my Grandmother telling me that she remembered when tuna was first introduced, and how there were lots of recipes telling how to use this ‘new’ food, and how it was an exciting, cutting-edge thing to serve. Including a lot of comments that it could be used in as a replacement for chicken almost any recipe (even to a brand name Chicken of the Sea). This was all astonishing to me, having grown up with various tuna casseroles as a staple of church dinners or pot-luck suppers. As she said, they called it “tuna fish” so people knew what it was – no one around there had ever heard of “tuna” before.

Also kiwifruit.

A variety of berries: raspberry, strawberry, huckleberry, whortleberry, marionberry, blackberry, blueberry, cranberry, etc.

Walnut. And Beer Nuts :slight_smile:

Crayfish are a crustacean.

I didn’t get this for the longest time. You mean “tunny” doesn’t rhyme with “sunny” or “runny”?

Yeah, that’s just lunny.

OK, how about toonie fish?

Or, on another phonetic tangent, maybe toonie ghoti?

“Chili pepper berry con quadruped carne”

Your theory actually makes a lot of sense. That reminds me of a novel by Beverly Cleary that was written in the early 1950s (it might have been Beezus and Ramona, I don’t remember exactly because I read all the Beverly Cleary books one after another when I was in 3rd grade). They referred to “pizza pie” and to me in the late 1960s, when pizza had become an American staple, “pizza pie” already sounded odd. It was like back then, pizza was still considered an exotic foreign dish that had to have “pie” appended so that *americani *could understand what it was. Cleary was from Oregon, where it probably took pizza “pie” longer to catch on in the '50s; if she’d been from New York City, there would have been no need to append a food category to its name.

I distinctly recall people saying “tuna fish” when growing up in SE Michigan, but for some reason I’ve never picked up that habit myself. It’s just “tuna” whether it be a fish, steak, or some macerated tissue from a can (also, macerated tissue from a can is the only tuna I really knew when growing up).

As has already been pointed out, that’s not the case. However, really? Where do we use “tuna” in English to refer to the prickly pear? It’s always been “prickly pear” my entire life, and I had no idea that they were called “tunas” until I arrived at tuna HQ in Mexico about 10 years ago.

I actually came here to mention “dolphin fish” because if you just say that you want to go fishing for “dolphin,” people think you’re a cruel, heartless bastard. I’ve always heard of “dolphin fish” when growing up, but for some reason “mahi mahi” seems to have become popularized instead. I also see/hear the Spanish “dorado” being used more and more often on American menus and in speech.

Although I rarely, if ever, hear “pizza pie” anymore, it’s not uncommon to hear a pizza referred to as a “pie”. I believe I heard that in a pizza joint commercial just the other day. Something like: “Here at PizzaLand, we make a really good pie.” Some of my friends use that term as well.

At least in the US, the “pie” in “pizza pie” is very regional. In NYC, the pie is almost universal. To the point that if some asks if you want a pie with no other context, pizza is more likely meant than dessert.

In the south or southwest, pie is almost always a baked dessert & pizza almost always has just that one word in its name.

Elsewhere there’s a blend. And of course the US is getting ever more homogenized. Whether the use of pie in connection with pizza is growing or shrinking I have no clue.

In Michigan – definitely not the south or the southwest – I’d expect a pie to be a bona fide pie, not pizza. Pizza’s pizza. “Pizza pie” is something that Dean Martin needs for rhyming. Or stereotypical Italians would say.

Did anyone else grow up with “pot pies”? Little round meat pies you would heat up in the oven pre-microwave days. A smaller, inferior form of the British meat pie found in pubs.

I really like those British and Irish meat pies. There’s even an Aussie version here. The best ones, IMHO, are made with Guinness stout. Really.

Yes. We liked them, but I couldn’t imagine giving that to a child today. Probably loaded with salt and fat. The British pub food version is probably not much healthier, but they do taste great.

We would actually make tuna (hah!) pot pie. These were usually at least partly home-made, though, versus buying a frozen thing you’d pop in the oven, if that’s what you meant.

Interestingly enough, while I hated pot pies (something about the way the pastry part would get all slimy on the inside), I loved my dad’s pasties.