I was at the grocery store today, looking for steaks to grill. I saw one described as a "limousine" steak. I looked up "limousine" in dictionary.com and only found it used with cars. Then I put "limousine" and "steak" into Google, finding a few foreign sites. Has anyone heard of this use before? My grocery store seemed to think it is a run-of-the-mill usage, and this is not a gourmet grocery store.

Kalleh,

You must have been in that section of the grocery store that I call "the chapel," because there I have seen so many people bow down (to examine price labels) then straighten up, usually muttering such expressions as, "Jesus Christ!" or "Oh My God!"

Here's a link about
Limousine cattle.

I had never heard of these cattle, either, Kalleh, so I looked at the link that Jerry posted. The history of Limousin cattle begins at least as far back as 1698, and perhaps 16,000 years ago. (Another site says 20,000 years.)

Limousine is a car, as Kalleh said, but Limousin is a region in France. Note the pronunciation.

The AHD notes that limousine may have come from Limousin.

Tinman

Wow, you are right. I bet they just misspelled it at my grocery store. Here I was raised on a farm and didn't know about those limousin cattle!

Not a originally a car as such but a style of car body. In the days when many manufacturers made only the chassis of their vehicles, their customers would order a particular body of a particular style from one of the many body manufacturers.

The limousine body was a style that had a large rear passenger compartment, usually separated from the chauffeur by a division (rather like the modern London taxi). Although this style is now rare, the word has been adopted to refer to any large and luxurious car.

Sadly, few of the old body style names have survived and mention, for example, of the attractive "Doctor's Coupe" style would give rise only to blank looks from most these days.

Richard English

shepherd's cloak. The cloak, from the Limousin area of France,was called a limousine, and gradually the word transferred itself from the driver to the vehicle. That use was good english by 1902.

[source: third-party's published citation of Craig Carver's A History of English its Own Words, (1991), p. 243. etymology on-line adds that the region's name says traces to the chief city, Limoges, but differs a bit on how the region-name evolved into the car-name.]

[This message was edited by shufitz on Mon Jun 16th, 2003 at 17:51.]

The attractive "Doctor's Coupe" style would give rise only to blank looks from most
these days.
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Here in Oregon, where we have TWICE voted in favor of assisted suicide, the Doctor's Coupe is the Coupe de Grace.

Now, to horn in on the cattle stuff, how about Charolais cattle? What bull can be spread about them without leaving everyone cowed? I hope nobody has a beef with me about milking this thread a bit.

Asa, who's too hot, and is sitting in the boeuf.

Well done, Asa. You and J.T. seem enjoy puns more than most of us. (B.H. likes them when he's in the moooood.)