海角大神

Last week in this space we looked at the words flour and flower, originally just variants of the same word, as an example of what linguists call 鈥渟emantic bleaching.鈥� In this process, part of the original meaning of a word falls out, and the word sets out on its own path, so to speak, differentiating itself from related words.

Stanford linguist Dan Jurafsky points to salad, salami, salsa, sauce, sausage, and even souse as another example of this phenomenon.

Salad suggests greenness, freshness, low-calorie-ness, all things gastronomically virtuous. Sausage is none of the above. Sauce is a condiment, more or less liquid. Salsa is just Spanish for sauce, but it鈥檚 come into English to mean the kind of sauce that Spanish-speaking peoples eat, all tomatoes and spice, not to be confused with, say, the sedate white sauces from the kitchen at Downton Abbey.

The common thread here is salt. Salad was originally 鈥渟alted vegetables,鈥� or 鈥渧egetables seasoned with brine,鈥� which the says was 鈥渁 popular Roman dish.鈥澛�

derives, via French, from another Latin term meaning 鈥渟easoned with salt,鈥� salsicus. Ditto . (Note how the Latin 鈥渁l鈥� becomes the French 鈥渁u.鈥� It鈥檚 a common pattern.) came into English from Italian, but also goes back to Latin 鈥� to salare, to salt.听

And ? It sounds bibulous, but has a respectable culinary sense, too. In the kitchen, to souse (from the German Salz, salt), is to keep food in a liquid such as vinegar. It鈥檚 a kind of 鈥減ickling.鈥澛�

Those who follow politics know the widely attributed to German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck (but who knows, really?): 鈥淟aws are like sausages; it is better not to see them being made.鈥� But of these particular word cousins, salami may be the one that鈥檚 gone furthest afield in terms of metaphor. That it lends itself to such fine slicing has made it a byword for incrementalism.

As articulates the collective wisdom: 鈥淪alami slicing refers to a series of many small actions, often performed by clandestine means, that as an accumulated whole produces a much larger action or result that would be difficult or unlawful to perform all at once.鈥� The online encyclopedia adds, for the benefit of anyone who may not be paying close enough attention: 鈥淭he term is typically used pejoratively.鈥澛�

It鈥檚 widely ascribed to a Hungarian Stalinist named .听

鈥淪alami tactics鈥� were what the Soviet Union used at the end of World War II 鈥渢o produce not only a friendly sphere of Soviet influence but also a cordon of dictatorships reliably responsive to Russian orders,鈥� as Max Frankel, of , wrote in his review of Anne Applebaum鈥檚 book 鈥淚ron Curtain鈥� in 2012. 鈥淎pplebaum tracks the salami slicing as typically practiced in Poland, Hungary and Germany, and serves up not only the beef but also the fat, vinegar and garlic in exhausting detail.鈥澛�

Chancellor Bismarck, meet Joseph Stalin.