My sister was telling me that in the south people call red peppers mangoes. Has anyone ever heard of that before? I tried to find something about it online, but couldn't.
If that's the case, how do they differentiate between the fruit and the vegetable?
One summer when I was in college, I worked at a camp outside of Fredericksburg, Virginia. The cook in the kitchen referred to all bell peppers, red or green, as "mangoes." I had never heard that before, growing up in Cincinnati. We called green peppers "green peppers." They are the same peppers you call "capsicums," Richard.
Wordmatic
Posts: 1390 | Location: Near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA
That's interesting. In the first site Jerry posted, it said one of the states calling mangoes green peppers is Illinois (Pennsylvania is another, Wordmatic). I've certainly never seen that.
quote:
There are so many words that have multiple meanings that I am sure they would cope
Yes but...how confusing. If a recipe calls for a cup of chopped mangoes, you are supposed to automatically know which they're talking about? It would be like calling chicken beef. How odd.
I wonder how long it's been since mangos were sold in the States. I'm guessing, not before WW2. It would be interesting to find a cookbook that refers to sweet peppers as mangoes.
[Addendum: After some googling, I found the DARE entry on mango (link) to be interesting. Evidently, when first introduced in the 16th century to Europe, mangoes were pickles. The word came to mean any of the more commonly available "fruits or vegetables filled with a usu. highly spiced stuffing and pickled." (Pick a peck of pickled peppers?)]This message has been edited. Last edited by: zmježd,
* Mango melon (Cucumis melo var. chito), a type of muskmelon * Bell pepper, in some parts of the Midwestern United States (especially southern Ohio)
OED Online:
quote:
Mango, n. II. Extended uses.
4. a. Cookery. A pickle resembling that made of green mangoes; (later) spec. a pickle made of whole fruits stuffed with spices; a whole fruit stuffed and pickled in this way. (Also with distinguishing word indicating the type of fruit.) Cf. MANGO v. Now U.S. regional.
1679 J. LOCKE Direct. Foreigner in P. King [i]Life of Locke (1830) I. 249 Mango and saio are two sorts of sauces brought from the East Indies. 1699 J. EVELYN Acetaria App. sig. O8, Mango of Cucumbers. 1699 J. EVELYN Acetaria App. sig. P4, To make a Mango with them [sc. walnuts]. 1728 E. SMITH Compl. Housewife (ed. 2) 59 To make Melon Mangoes. 1777Farmer's Mag. 2 310 (heading) To make Mango of Large Cucumbers. 1845 E. ACTON Mod. Cookery xxii. 600 The peaches may be converted into excellent mangoes by [etc.]. 1859 J. R. BARTLETT Dict. Americanisms (ed. 2), Mango. We apply this name to a green musk-melon stuffed with horse-radish,..etc., and then pickled. 1903Dial. Notes 2 320 [South-eastern Missouri] Mango, a kind of pickle made of small green melons stuffed with tomatoes, etc. 1940 C. L. BROWN Amer. Cooks 395 Stuffed Mangoes... Either green peppers or small muskmelons may be used for mangoes. Mix all well together and fill each mango. 1982 W. WEAVER Quaker Woman's Cookbk. lxvi, In Tidewater Maryland..muskmelons provided the most popular form of local mango.
b. Chiefly U.S. A muskmelon (plant or fruit). Now: spec. (more fully mango melon) a variety of muskmelon, Cucumis melo var. chito, having small fruits especially suitable for pickling or preserving, now also grown for ornament; the fruit of this plant.
1866 R. M. COPELAND Country Life 37 Hoe carefully the pickle crops of Cucumbers, Mangoes, Peppers, and Martynias. 1949 L. H. BAILEY Man. Cultivated Plants (rev. ed.) 955 s.v. Cucumis melo, Var. Chito, Naud. (C. chito, Morr.). Mango Melon...Frs. used in the making of preserves and pickles, under the names Mango, Orange Melon, Vegetable Melon. 1989Encycl. Brit. Micropædia VII. 1033/3 Chito group [of melons], the mango melons, with fruit usually the size and shape of a lemon or orange, and flesh whitish and cucumber-like. 1995Nichols Garden Nursery 25/2 (advt.) Vine Peach--‘Mango Melon’..This native American annual vine fruit makes excellent preserves, chutneys and marmalades.
c.U.S. regional. A pepper, spec. a green bell pepper.
1948Wisconsin Eng. Lang. Survey Suppl. in Dict. Amer. Regional Eng. (1996) III. at Mango, I was surprised while living in Virginia to see green peppers advertised and sold as ‘mangoes’. 1964Gourmet 2 May, The use of the term mango for bell pepper..is not limited to Indiana...Bird and chili peppers are also referred to as mangoes. 1994 J. F. MARIANI Dict. Amer. Fruit & Drink 192/1 In the Midwest (especially the Ohio Valley) a sweet pepper is called a ‘mango’. 1995Fortean Times June-July 56/1 ‘Mango’, for some reason, is a synonym for green pepper in many parts of the USA.
Mango, v. Cookery. Obs. trans. To pickle as green mangoes are pickled. 1728 E. SMITH Compl. Housewife (ed. 2) 63 To mango Cucumbers. Cut a little Slip out of the side of the Cucumber [etc.].
The OED says mango also is used for certain species of hummingbirds. And that it's an obsolete term for a dealer in slaves, especially prostitutes:
[QUOTE] 1602 B. JONSON Poetaster III. iv. 300 And your fat Foole there, my Mango, bring him too. 1658 F. VAUX Elegy Iohn Cleaveland (broadside), Tho all our Mango Poets thee upbraid, (Whose Drabs are Muses, Poetry their Trade).
mango the fruit is from Dravidian. The OED cites Malayalam മാങ്ങ māṅṅa, and the AHD cites Tamil மாங்காய் māṅkāy, from mā "mango" plus kāy "unripe fruit".
mango the dealer in slaves is from Latin mangō, a dealer in slaves, the same source as monger.
To me, a mango is a mango; a bell pepper is a bell pepper; a muskmelon is a muskmelon, and don't confuse me with the pickles! Mangoes are expensive, though, so I never buy them. ;-)
Wordmatic
Posts: 1390 | Location: Near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA
I'm a little confused by the tenor of this thread. Exactly what is the problem here? Regionalisms exist and are little or no problem to the people using them. Outsiders may have to come up to speed and learn them but after that everything should be OK communication-wise. Variations and change in and between languages, dialects, and other lects happen for positive reasons not negative ones. I'm sure now that mangoes are available in most of the States that some accommodation has taken place to distinguish between mango (the fruit) and mango (the bell pepper or muskmelon). It's similar to the different regional terms for soft drinks. I call them generically soda; others call them pop or cola. They don't do this to confuse people in their language group, although dialects and regionalisms can be used that way on outsiders. Until about a year ago, I never knew what a hush puppy was. I'd heard of them, always in a Southern cuisine context, but I didn't know what they were. I finally tried some recently, and now I know. People in the South don't use the term to confuse me or themselves; they use it to communicate.
I'm a little confused by the tenor of this thread. Exactly what is the problem here? Regionalisms exist and are little or no problem to the people using them.
Well since I started this thread, I suppose I should respond. Yes, regionalisms exist; I agree. Soda, pop, cola, etc. is a good example. Another is tennis shoes, athletic shoes or sneakers. And so on.
I would say, however, that regionalisms can be confusing to those from different regions, depending on how common they are.
However, this particular regionalism was strange to me, and I simply asked about it. I was further surprised to hear Illinois was one of the states using this regionalism. I've been around for awhile (since before mangoes have become so popular), and I'd never heard the use. It was just a question, and not a criticism of the use of regionalisms. I still, however, am skeptical that peppers were ever called mangoes in Illinois, though perhaps it was in the southern tip of Illinois.
It all makes me wonder how regionalisms are identified.
I was not confused by your opening question. But by subsequent postings. Yes, as I said, regionalisms are confusing to the out-group, but they don't develop for this reason.
It all makes me wonder how regionalisms are identified.
By region or by linguists. But seriously, if you look at some of the entries in DARE (e.g., in the link I gave above), you'll see little maps that show the distribution of the terms. Linguists have been collecting data since the late 19th century and displaying it in atlases for nearly as long.
I had only quickly clicked your link before. Now I read lots of entries, and I loved the little maps!
When linguists study regionalisms, it's one thing. However, sometimes I wonder whether people just call something a regionalism for no good reason. I've read about supposed regionalisms from Wisconsin and Illinois that I've certainly never heard. Then again, I can never be sure because both states are big and those terms could be used in areas I don't frequent. I took some classes once in the southern tip of Illinois and it was like being in the south. It was completely different from northern Illinois.
That's because it's far more complicated than just "this word is used in this region", which is a bit of a convenient fiction. Words can be used personally (idiolect), familialy (ecolect, hat tip to zm for finding me that word), regionally (dialect). But they also migrate from one level to another or from one region to another, come into fashion, go out of fashion, become exclusive to one class or another, become exclusive to one age group or another, or one race or another. And it changes. Any analysis of what is and what isn't a feature of a particular language variant isn't just a snapshot in space it's a snapshot in time. Things that are regionalism now could be national next year or completely dead and gone. Words my father uses are sometimes incomprehensible to me and we have lived in the same region for our whole lives.
There's an interesting example of a phrase that is apparently crossing into mainstream American from Black AMerican but which I have never heard here.
"No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money." Samuel Johnson.
One thing linguists noticed when they started collecting actual dialect data and created visual representations of it (i.e., dialect maps) was that many dialects did not have solid boundaries between their regions. Sometimes the lines between regions which used one term or another moved around depending on the term. These boundaries are called isoglosses (link and link). Also, words spread from one area to another. If languages can borrow words, then why not dialects.
That's really helpful, z and Bob. I realize that until now I've had a misconception about regionalisms. I had thought you'd recognize them if you lived in areas where they're purported to be, but apparently not. The isoglosses are especially interesting. I imagine that's why I often read, for example, that people from Wisconsin say "pop" or "bubbler" when I say "soda" or "drinking fountain."
I'm a newbie who just found this discussion list after returning from holidays in northern Kentucky. Just thought I’d post a reply to this recent discussion on the word “mango” since I have experience with this:
In the house I grew up in, in the 1970s in Park Hills, Ky (2 miles from downtown Cincinnati, OH), stuffed bell peppers were a frequent dinner entrée – but the dish was always called “Stuffed Mangoes.”
Although some of the earlier posts seem to indicate that a number of fruits or vegetables could be stuffed or pickled and called a “mango,” by the 1970s in northern Kentucky, a "mango" was generally understood to be the thing that is more commonly called a bell pepper, whether stuffed, pickled or raw. I think we may also have used the term “bell pepper,” but “mango” was at least as common a term for the same item.
Interesting -- an earlier poster wrote: “I had never heard that before, growing up in Cincinnati. We called green peppers ‘green peppers.’ ” Among my friends who grew up on the Ohio side of the river, some experienced the same mango/pepper confusion and some did not. So it occurred on both sides of the river, but wasn’t universal, even in that metro area.
To answer the original question from Kalleh, at least in the Cincinnati/No. Ky. area, it wasn’t just red bell peppers, but any bell pepper, that was called a “mango.” We didn’t need to distinguish between the pepper and the tropical fruit because we didn’t have the tropical fruit commonly available.
At some point in my childhood, my dad mentioned at dinner that there was a tropical fruit known as a “mango” that was nothing like a bell pepper. So I had that awareness for the latter part of my childhood, but still never saw an actual mango until I was an adult and had left the Cincinnati area. I’m not sure when actual tropical mangoes first came to supermarkets in Cincinnati and its suburbs, but would imagine that would have been sometime in the late 1980s.
These days, my family and friends in the Cincinnati/NoKy area have all encountered true mangoes and generally seem to exclusively say “bell pepper” for bell peppers. Except, for my 87-year-old mother at least, “stuffed bell peppers” just doesn’t sound very good. For that dish, “stuffed mangoes” is the only name that will do.
(I live in Chicago now – and am married to an LA native whose late Hawaiian grandmother used to send us jars of homemade mango chutney, made w/ mangoes grown in her neighbors’ yards. No mango confusion there!)
Since posting the message you quoted above, I have written to a couple of my former camp counselor pals to see if my memory was correct. I worked at summer camps in both Southwestern Ohio and Virginia over four college summers, and I was wondering whether I had gotten camp cooks confused. I didn't get a definite answer from my friend who had worked with me in Virginia--she couldn't remember--but a friend who had worked with me at the Cincinnati camp remembered her great aunt, a native Cincinnatian, referring to green peppers as "mangoes." So that seems to point to its being an Ohio=ism rather than a Virginia-ism.
You are correct, though, that even though this expression existed north of the Ohio River, it was not used everywhere in Cincinnati. Interesting, but I guess not unusual. Actually, my parents were originally from different parts--my mother, from Cleveland and my father, from Middletown, so they might not have grown up hearing this usage.
I left Cincinnati in 1967, so would have missed the evolution of the mango from the vegetable to the fruit.
Happy New Year to All!
Wordmatic
Posts: 1390 | Location: Near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA
I grew up in Northeast Ohio, and for us, bell peppers were called peppers - sometimes called sweet peppers. I've never heard of them referred to as mangoes.
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