I found this in an article on The Weather Channel:
"Wow, those things are no joke. They are hot," said Jacobs, the top chef at Roots Restaurant and Cellar in Milwaukee.

Top chef? What's with us, calling any old cook a chef? Doesn't chef mean chief? Head cook?

While my curmudgeonly prescriptivism is showing clearly here, I nevertheless think we've begun using a term that results in too many "chefs" spoiling the broth of our alphabet soup.

According to the AHD, a chef is a cook, often the head cook at a large restaurant. I wasn't sure about this definition but I am assured it is correct by the chef at the local Burger King.

AHD is stupid! OED is right! http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=chef

Geoff, channeling James J. Kirkpatrick. (Yuck)

quote:

Originally posted by Geoff:
Doesn't chef mean chief?

No, it means "The man who presides over the kitchen of a large household; a head cook" according to the other OED. "Top chef" could mean that there is more than one chef. Or it could be an appositive modification, that is "the chef, who is top".

Well, if you cannot have a top chef then I guess you cannot have a sous-chef. The Wikipedia article on chef has lots of different titles: chef de cuisine (executive chef, head chef), sous-chef [de cuisine] (under-chef), chef de partie (station chef, line cook), et al. There's even a table of station-chef titles with ones like pasty-chef and pantry-chef.

I think what we've got is a word that originally meant "head" (< French chef < Latin caput) has transmogrified into something that basically means "cook (at a fancy restaurant)", or for me cook who went to chef school.

Cf. the title president which in Latin meant literally 'sitting before' (present particples also could do duty as a nomen agentis, so 'before-sitter'). So, what does 'vice president' mean? I guess the POTUS does sit before congress as in the White House is across the Mall from the Capitol Building.

Most defs seem to be "head cook" (possibly derived from cannibalism). Since everyone aspires to greater glory, even the most atrocious food-preparer has claimed that title.

Sous-chef makes sense, since it indicates one beneath the commander-in-chef, but who has authority over the line cooks, just as, in the USA, the Vice-President is President of the Senate. In his case it's like presiding over a herd of angry cats. Kinda like cooking on the TV show, Hell's Kitchen. It's on the Fox Nutwork - which figures.

PR, I think you've nailed it: Too many people want undeserved glory.

I always seem to have my own definitions for words, but to me, a chef creates the food at the restaurant, while a cook takes a prescribed recipe (as with McDonalds or Burger King, or in greasy spoons), and just cooks the food.

You see, when I have my own definitions, everything is so much more clear.

quote:

Originally posted by Geoff:
Geoff, channeling James J. Kirkpatrick. (Yuck)

You mean James J. Kilpatrick?

Right you are, Tinman! I was tuned to the wrong channel.

quote:

There is nothing which I dread so much as a division of the republic into two great parties, each arranged under its leader, and concerting measures in opposition to each other. This, in my humble apprehension, is to be dreaded as the greatest political evil under our Constitution.
John Adams

We have met the enemy and they is us....Walt Kelly (Pogo)

This message has been edited. Last edited by: <Proofreader>,

Wow, it's prescience, isn't it?

April 22, 1970 Earth Day poster (the first Earth Day)


April 22, 1971 Earth Day comic strip

Language Log, March 18, 2009

This message has been edited. Last edited by: tinman,

As you can tell from my previous post, I edited the comment. I had thought about what I had written and decided, without checking, that "he" should have been "they". Obviously I was wrong and should have left it alone.

Since this thread asks a question of usage, I have another. Which is it: a flea market or a swap meet? Or is there another name you'd use to describe the sale of Chinese goods past their prime.

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Proofreader:
Chinese goods past their prime.[/QUOTE
Doesn't that make them Chinese bads?

quote:

Chinese goods

Or, as Nancy Griffith calls them, "unnecessary plastic objects."

Oh, Shu really likes Pogo. Indeed, we have visited the Okefenokee Swamp park just because of that. Our kids were with us and of course thought we were crazy.

Yep, Walt Kelly was great!

BTW, this ole house we live in came with a 1901 USA map, and it depicts Florida as being about 2/3 the size it now is. Damned real estate developers wiped out the swamps, planted houses in them, and now they're bitching about alligators in their pools. They need a few alligators in their pols, chewing on their butts for allowing real estate developers to do it.

If Florida was only 2/3 the size back in 1901, I don't get it. It became a state in 1845. Did it change after that? Is that common?

Was that all accomplished by draining/ diverting water in the Everglades? That's scary. Talk about a 'house built on sand'!

Here you go! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D...nt_of_the_Everglades

I wonder how many "enlightened" things we are now doing that will seem ruinous in a century - IF we don't wipe ourselves out first?

quote:

Originally posted by Proofreader:
Since this thread asks a question of usage, I have another. Which is it: a flea market or a swap meet? Or is there another name you'd use to describe the sale of Chinese goods past their prime.

This part of the thread is bringing back sweet memories of familiy hrs spent at local fleas hunting for the rare metal jointed Power Rangers-- Japanese goods [bads].

quote:

rare metal jointed Power Rangers

Leave it to the Japanese to add that appendage.