My sister-in-law just had a baby. (Yay!) (He’s really cute.) (Totally YAY!) (SOOOOO cute.)
Okay, I’ll start over.
I sometimes think about tuna fish. Not, y’know, the food. Although that too. But the phrase. Because isn’t it redundant?
It peeves me that Brits & Aussies call beets “beetroot.” Do we say “carrotroot”? Do we say “lettuceleaf”? No. Therefore, whence “beetroot”? Yet we do say “tuna fish.”
So on Sunday, my sister-in-law (the brand new mom) and I were discussing food cravings during pregnancy, and I mentioned how funny it was that Arthur pretty much hates every food that I gorged on in pregnancy. I craved mashed potatoes, he can’t stand ’em. I ate an absolute ton of tuna, he won’t touch the stuff.
And New Mom said that she, too, craved tuna during pregnancy.
“But not, y’know, tuna steak. Tuna fish. In the can.”
So that’s interesting. “Tuna” means tuna steak, or sushi, or sashimi. “Tuna fish” means Chicken of the Sea.
And the baby? Really cute.
What’s the difference between a piano and a fish?
“Tuna fish” is one of those “Deaprtment of Redundancy Department” things… in my house we just say “tuna”.