Chicagoist: What's in a Word?

smussy

Tue, 08 Jan 2008 17:24:18 -0600

yeah, i know. they're so uncouth and passe, but, what would i do without them ... ?

dave

Tue, 08 Jan 2008 15:44:37 -0600

Thanks, Smussy. I've tried to curb them, but there's no way (same goes for the ellipses ...)

smussy

Tue, 08 Jan 2008 14:49:40 -0600

i like you, dave. anyone who throws down that many parentheticals in one comment is my kind of guy (i'm a tangential, parenthetical whiz myself).

dave

Tue, 08 Jan 2008 11:34:06 -0600

Ugh, I hate this word. I'm sure it had some higher meaning (something like how Smussy defined it), but it seems to be just some label dirty yuppies use to sniff each other out. (Disclosure: I'm a dirty yuppie.) I didn't think much of it until I was out to dinner with some friends-of-friends, and one asked me (after I made some comment about fennel or something equally quotidian), "Oh! Are you a foodie??" As if it were some aspirational label I'd self-appended. It's like going to a bar, ordering a PBR, and someone saying, "OH! Are you a hipster?! I'm a hipster, too! Let's go listen to Band of Horses and tell stories about our tattoos!" (Disclosure: I love BoH.) Can't we just like cheap beer and good music, or know things about sausage without having it fit into some profile? [dime store philosophy] Sigh ... I guess most of us are adrift in this world, trying to find the holes into which our pegs fit, even at this stage in life. [/dime store philosophy]

smussy

Tue, 08 Jan 2008 10:49:01 -0600

that's funny. i was just thinking about that word at the end of the year, and how i hadn't really heard that word until i started hanging around chicagoist folk. and their 'foodies.' and i didn't know it referred to the gourmets themselves. i thought it sort of referred to people who followed the gourmets and liked to eat nice stuff and cook nice stuff and were into good wine/spirits and liked to take pictures of 'food porn,' and dish about dishes. like ... grant achatz is a gourmet chef, and the people who keep up with all his latest endeavors are foodies. my parents are the antithesis of foodies.

pantagrapher

Tue, 08 Jan 2008 10:36:28 -0600

I prefer "glutton."

Karl Klockars

Tue, 08 Jan 2008 10:27:52 -0600

I hate "foodie." Unfortunately, I also hate "food snob," "gourmet," "gourmand," "food afficionado," and the rest. It's the best of a bad lot.

chloe_pb

Tue, 08 Jan 2008 10:23:10 -0600

I have no comment on the "foodie" label as I'm not one myself, but can I just tell you how great it is to see someone use the word "ort"? I feel like I'm either reading Virginia Woolf or doing a crossword puzzle - both great experiences. That's why I love Chicagoist. Language rules!

Spook

Tue, 08 Jan 2008 09:58:55 -0600

the only people who use that word are old yuppies