Dining@Large: My Word! - Baltimore restaurants: The dish on the restaurant scene, memorable meals, dining trends and more

A friend dined out at Volt and ordered a couple bottles of wine. The first was $80. The second was considerably cheaper, maybe $40.

When the bill arrived, her horrified husband asked if she'd realized the price of the $80 bottle when she'd ordered.

She briefly considered lying, but then confessed: "Yes. I was momentarily intimidated by the sommelier, but I recovered."

In this week's Shallow Thought Wednesdays post, John Lindner tells us there's a word for that: vintimidation.

Here's John. LV

Do you dunandunate? I know I do.

To dunandunate is to overuse a word or phrase recently added to your vocabulary – I paraphrase from this unbylined story in the Telegraph.co.uk that pries opens the Oxford English Dictionary’s vault of not-yet-accepted words.

By that august body’s lights neither you nor I “officially” dunandunate, because “dunandunate” is not recognized as a real word by the keepers of the OED – the holy writ of the Queen’s English. Too bad, because this secret stash of coinage brims with desperately needed neologisms, many ripe for foodie assimilation.

I like this one: “Freegan – someone who rejects consumerism, usually by eating discarded food.” My new politically correct name for Dumpster divers.

Here’s one whose rejection from the canon surprises me: “Locavor – a person who tries to eat only locally grown or produced food.” My guess is this term shows up in an upcoming OED version. Prof. McIntyre, I yield the floor ...

I love this one: “Peppier – a waiter whose sole job is to offer diners ground pepper, usually from a large pepper mill.”

“Wibble – the trembling of the lower lip just shy of actually crying.” Not necessarily a foodie term (though it could happen often enough if you tend to pick up the tab in high-end restaurants), but I like it.

"Dringle – the watermark left by a glass of liquid.”

This calls for a haiku, but instead I offer my own ten new food terms and, of course, invite you to enlist your own epicurean neologisms which I promise to dunandunate to the fullest extent allowed by state law:

1. Trendivore – Nomadic habitue of newly designated hip eateries.

2. Zuchinundated – overwhelmed by a much larger than anticipated crop from a small home garden.

3. Roont – an overcooked burger.

4. Vintimidation – Fear of ordering the wrong wine.

5. Wheylaid – momentarily shocked by the olfactory assault of strong cheese.

6. Debambinated – the ability to eat once cute animals without a trace of guilt.

7. Menupity – the feeling of wanting to like a restaurant owned or staffed by sincerely nice people that badly fails to live up to its potential.

8. Spamulent – the quality of having been processed from unspecified “parts”.

9. Omnibus – a server who takes your order, delivers your food and clears the table after you leave.

10. Amnesiagraphic – a server suffering from the inability to remember orders without writing them down.

Chicago Tribune photo

Comments

Let get this straight. A couple travels to Frederick to eat a super trendy restaurant operated by a television star chef and one of them objects to an $80 bottle of wine?

Posted by: Elite Elephant Lover | August 25, 2010 4:27 PM

Laura,

Perhaps you should peruse the obscure blog "You Don't Say" before you denigrate the OED or any other dictionary for that matter. Mr. McIntyre will no doubt be more than happy to educate you in the role of dictionaries relative to language.

Posted by: rusty | August 25, 2010 10:31 PM

OBSCURE?!!!!!

Posted by: Laura Lee | August 25, 2010 11:23 PM

I wouldn't say the OED was exactly being denigrated...

Posted by: Filbert E. Winchester | August 25, 2010 11:33 PM

Well anyway, it was John Lindner doing the denigrating, not Laura Vozzella.

Posted by: Camille Quelquejeu | August 25, 2010 11:49 PM

Hello, Laura Lee?? Did you not heed your calling? JL is in need of a haiku!!

As usual JL, well done! I often feel vintimidation when ordering anything other than Mad Dog 20/20....

Posted by: Trixie | August 26, 2010 6:48 AM

Awww, a Wordvillian wants to play in the Sandbox. Isn't that cute?

Posted by: Anonymous | August 26, 2010 10:11 AM