offensive meat

[Richard Tarleton]

It wasn't a very good display - more like a gamekeeper's gibbet - but I think the larger point that there is now a general disconnect between many people and where their food comes from stands.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

noun
Definition of DISCONNECT

: a lack of or a break in connection, consistency, or agreement <a huge disconnect…between the nation's capital and the rest of the country — R. J. Samuelson>
First Known Use of DISCONNECT

1976

Now that's interesting - only from 1976. However, the bad-spelling dictionary may only refer to U.S. usage.

[Beef Oven!]

Most of the online versions of modern dictionaries, including Collins, accept this new usage.

http://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/disconnect

http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/disconnect

http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/business-english/disconnect_2

I also find such pedantry tiresome in the extreme. Language evolves. That's why we no longer use Chaucerian spelling: that slepen al the nyght with open ye

There's good evolving and there's bad evolving. Bad evolving is where the dynamic exists between the word and a horrible misuse by the uneducated masses. Disconnection is an example of some bad evolving going on.

Another example, is the acceptance now, of 'chomping at the bit'. Yuck!

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

There's good evolving and there's bad evolving. Bad evolving is where the dynamic exists between the word and a horrible misuse by the uneducated masses.

This has always been my gripe.


But getting back to the meat thing - if people eat the stuff, they should be prepared to know the truth of how it reached them.

[jean]

Bad evolving is where the dynamic exists between the word and a horrible misuse by the uneducated masses. Disconnection is an example of some bad evolving going on.

I don't really know what you mean by this, as it was disconnect as a noun that you objected to, but that usage was an invention of early telephone engineers rather than the uneducated masses.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Er…

Could we please discuss this on a more suitable thread, such as Pedants' Paradise?

[Beef Oven!]

I don't really know what you mean by this, as it was disconnect as a noun that you objected to, but that usage was an invention of early telephone engineers rather than the uneducated masses.

edit: uneducated masses and early telephone engineers (late telephone engineers RIP).

[Beef Oven!]

Er…

Could we please discuss this on a more suitable thread, such as Pedants' Paradise?

A light hearted comment turns into a battle that can be won or lost

[kea]

It wasn't a very good display - more like a gamekeeper's gibbet - but I think the larger point that there is now a general disconnect between many people and where their food comes from stands.

Like a lot of people of my generation (I think) I've grown up in a world where butcher shops, fishmongers', etc, don't really exist. We buy everything at the supermarket where all the parts that make it look like a recogniseable animal have been divested and the remainder wrapped up in plastic. (Apart from a few varieties of fish and shellfish that is.) During the three years I lived in the UK I'd often walk past a farmer's market selling fresh produce, dairy, meat, fish etc along with local crafts—rarely if ever bought anything there—on my way to Marks & Spencer or Sainsbury's; it simply didn't occur to me to do differently. To actually have the butchers, farmers, cheese makers etc be real people who I would buy things from directly, instead of taking things off a shelf. I think that's basically a cultural assumption by this point, one that we never bother to cross-examine ourselves about. I know where beef comes from, but my mental concept of it is as pink things in a plastic container.

[Flay]

I have some sympathy with the objectors. Sometimes the point is best made by taking an example to its extreme. Binmen do a wonderful job, but would we appreciate them openly displaying some of the more messy items that they collect? Should a bathroom display include a used toilet? (Apologies if Tracey Emin was thinking of this for her next exhibit). Should a paper hanky advert show the results of blown noses?

We know these things happen. It does not necessarily mean we must have them displayed.

[subcontrabass]

Originally Posted by Merriam-Webster Dictionary
noun
Definition of DISCONNECT

: a lack of or a break in connection, consistency, or agreement <a huge disconnect…between the nation's capital and the rest of the country — R. J. Samuelson>
First Known Use of DISCONNECT

1976

Now that's interesting - only from 1976. However, the bad-spelling dictionary may only refer to U.S. usage.

OED gives first usage (US) in 1905 in the context of telephony, with a first usage in the broader sense in 1982.

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

by the time i was five in 1950ish i had become vegetarian by choice .... for many years subsequently i affirmed that the experience of slaughtering plucking and gutting the chickens with my Uncle had been the root cause of this choice ... but not true, it was the gristly bits in the meat on the Tyne Tees Pullman when i was coming home to London from my annual stay in the rural paradise of Northumberland .... the gristly bits in the brown stew of school dinners kept me convinced in my choice along with my Mother's willingness to bake delicious chees pasties!

of course i turned and chose to eat meat and fish; later in years and living in the middle kingdom i butchered my own pheasants and greatly appreciated the well huing local beef from Charlie cooked by Bob

lately i have found that my palate has revolted and that any flesh [four legs or two or fins] is a difficult eat and that the plain sweetness of cucumber and tomatoes marks the high point of relish ...

Jamie Oliver pulled the stunt with school kids of showing the schoolkids exactly what went into the process and what that entailed in presenting a supermarket meat product to the nigh universal disgust of all the children and adults watching [less so in the USA]

when one ponders disgust [perhaps the most potent emotion] at the dietary preferences of other cultures [insects and so on] it has occurred to me that disgust may be cured by extreme hunger in many cases .... or curiosity [i can not eat frog and watched with revulsion a bunch of middle class kids devouring frogs and snails with gleeful relish] or politeness [how impolite to refuse the food eh] but only rarely

i think supermarkets should have the processes and raw materials of their flesh products very graphically displayed .... then more of us might go to the butcher ... [but not me]

[Bryn]

Back in 1974, while living in Cardiff for a most of the year, I used to shop quite frequently in the great Victorian covered market. I recall butchers there had large trays of sheep's heads labeled "My little blue-eyed beauties". Perhaps they still do.

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

Back in 1974, while living in Cardiff for a most of the year, I used to shop quite frequently in the great Victorian covered market. I recall butchers there had large trays of sheep's heads labeled "My little blue-eyed beauties". Perhaps they still do.

they most certainly displayed the carcasses of many different types of edible animal in the Covered Market in Oxford [two years back and presumably still do so]

[Barbirollians]

I did a school assembly on Do You Eat Veal when I was 13 in the very bad days of milk fed veal and veal crates .

I was quite pleased that two people fainted and general disgust for veal was engendered !

Now of course there are good grounds for meat eaters to eat properly raised veal as it makes much less likely the immediate disposal of male calves as I understand it .