It whirls. It slices. It chops and dices. There was nothing like it before its advent, so it was called by its trade name, and still is. When someone offers to shred the carrots you may find it inconvenient to say, “That would be lovely. You may use that small electric food processor with the collection of changeable blades each of which performs a specific function,” and (unless you’re hopelessly priggish) go with something more like, “Sure. Toss them in the Cuisinart.” Gee whiz! How can you take a word as an affront to your person and your language? Whether you like the sound of it or its origin is irrelevant. We’ve learned to live with (and drop the capitals from) aspirin, corn flakes, escalator, trampoline, heroin, tabloid, zipper, thermos, kerosene, hula hoop, teleprompter, and cellophane. And by what other name would we call a yo-yo?
Enough of that. As usual, there’s an embarrassment of riches, from ixion’s “mutilates basic nutrition” to AB’s “It turns my vittles!” to FRANCIS’s “Does it cut raisins…?” to peterm’s utter gem “citrus in a cocktail?” (not to mention sallyw’s “Please play nicely!”)- so many wonderful clues. I was expecting to see more words being processed- minced and spun and so forth, and was taken by surprise by the winner. When we use this word over here among the barbarians it’s almost invariably for the counter-top tornado, and to be honest I didn’t know that the company made other things like grill(e)s, but therogue has enlightened me with his (may I assume his?) great clue: “Star in ICU could be George Foreman contender?”. For anyone who doesn’t know, George Foreman is a heavyweight boxing star (a world champion, I believe) who made less money in the ring than by selling the George Foreman grill (he named all five of his sons George Foreman too!). The subtle use of “contender”, with its boxing association, for commercial competitor is an exceptionally nice touch, as is the image of a rival star in the ICU. Richly simple, beautifully turned out.
Here’s your prize, you rogue. My favo(u)rite part comes after the credits.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HO3tscCAVJ8