Meat

Meat

Though we spell it meat, in Old English it was spelled mete & meant simply, food.  It came from a Proto-Indo-European mad-, meaning moist or wet. This same root turned into an Irish word meaning pig, a German word meaning sausage, two Sanskrit words (a noun meaning fat, & a verb meaning bubbling), plus a Latin adjective meaning drunk.

It wasn’t until 1300 that meat (or mete as it was spelled at the time) moved from meaning food to the more specialized meaning, edible flesh. In the next century or so, vegetables could be referred to in English as grene-mete.

It appears those prudish Victorians coined the term white meat, so that while discussing their meal, diners wouldn’t have to use racy terms like breast. The euphemism dark meat helped Victorians avoid equally racy terms like leg & thigh.

Some of meat’s etymological moments include:

meatloaf – (main course of ground meat, breadcrumbs & seasonings) 1876

meat market – (a place one looks for sex partners) 1896

meat – (the essential part) 1910

meat-hooks – (fingers, hands or arms) 1919

meat wagon – (ambulance) 1920

like a blind dog in a meat market – (out of control) 1928

dead meat – (someone with no hope of surviving) 1948

meat grinder – (mill for grinding meat) 1951

And, of course, there are any number of meat idioms referring to sexual parts.

All starting with mad-

Hmmm.

Please leave any meaty thoughts in the comments section.

Big thanks to this week’s sources: Etymonline, Wordnik, Merriam-Webster, & the OED.