Happy Memorial Day. I've been working on a longer more complicated post in an effort to revive this blog, but as I find happens when I actually work on this thing, it makes me more receptive to other questions about other words. And frankly, cole slaw is both apt and easier to, uh, digest.
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| Recetario Spanglish |
Although cole slaw is often a feature of Memorial Day picnics (and picnics in general) the dish actually came to my attention last week, when a friend brought some to our book group potluck. She'd put it together from a recipe of the local favorite Gayle's Bakery and Roticceria.
Anyway, I started wondering what the "cole" in cole slaw was anyway. Associations to Nat King Cole and Old King Sole leapt to mind, but didn't seem likely to be accurate. But was there someone named Cole behind this ubiquitous salad? That didn't seem too likely either. It was time to find out.
It turns out that the original dish is the Dutch koolsla, translated in American English to "cole", or cabbage, with "sla" becoming slaw or salad. Etymology online gives us an intriguing first sighting of the transfer:
"A piece of sliced cabbage, by Dutchmen ycleped cold slaw"-- 1794
We see how easily "cole" becomes "cold" and in fact cold slaw was the common usage in America until the 1860s, when for some reason I haven't been able to discern, "cole" became the common term again. It seems an odd word for people to get finicky about, and I don't think of folk-etymologies, as "cold" in this case is, slipping back into correct usage like this for no reason. I wonder what happened.
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| The Alchemist |
I have the vague sense from my early childhood that cole slaw was something I thought of as cold slaw, and then at some point read or heard correctly and started speaking of in that way. But it's the kind of word that doesn't sound 'wrong' in the same way that other mispronounced words do. If someone referred to it as cold slaw it wouldn't bother me. Slaw, like revenge, is a dish best served cold.
As for ycleped, well, that's probably the topic of another blog post. But suffice to say that it means or meant called or named.
Cole goes back through Middle English col, to Old English cawel, or maybe Old Norse kal. In any case it all goes back to Latin cauli, which means stem or stalk, and descends even further into the misty past to the Proto-Indo-European *(s)kehuli, meaning stem of a plant or stalk. And if you don't know what Proto-Indo-European (or PIE) is, well, I can help you here.
Cole is related to a great many other words in the greater realm of European languages. If you're interested here's where you can find some of them.
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| -Coyau |
Perhaps the greatest surprise in this was to learn that the word cauliflower is another of these Latinate cauli words (which is obvious once you see it) and also another form of cabbage, which (to me) was not. Cole florye--flowered cabbage.
Oh geez. And there's also kale.
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| Rasbak |
P.S. The recipe for the delicious cole slaw that started me off on this quest can be found here.
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