(Untitled)

[wwidsith]

French has a word for the soft part of bread.  La mie.  "Cut the crusts off, mum, I just want the mie!"  (From Latin mica - in French too it used to mean "crumb", but that sense has now become attached to the diminutive form miette.)

Do any other languages have a word for this?  For that matter, do we??

Comments

[hobnobofjoy]

Oh, I like that!

I already took your last wordy thing of 'ruelle' for my QI folder, although I haven't submitted it yet...

Have you read The Meaning of Tingo? A bizarre but entertaining read. Not as amazing once you've studied some basic linguistics and realised that not every language works the same way as English, but still!

[muckefuck]

Entertaining as long as you don't take it at all seriously. It's so shot full of errors that you can't trust a thing in it that you haven't verified independently through a vetted source.

[hobnobofjoy]

I suspected as much, and have yet to use anything from it for anything more than anecdotal purposes.

The same applies for the Horrible Histories series which are completely made up in places. And these are the books that we were given to read as children under the guise of education!

[wwidsith]

Excellent! You have a QI folder....of course you do..

I have a copy of Tingo in the loo, but it is kind of famous for being so very wrong. In a way this makes me enjoy it even more though

[camrad]

Yes,we have this word in russian. Мякиш. Myakish. Or Myakooshka. Мякушка. These two words mean the same. Just one difference -grammar gender. Sorry for my english.hope that it understable)

[wwidsith]

Beautiful! Thank you!

[muckefuck]

From the OED: "crumb 3. a. The inner part of a loaf, not hardened in baking, and capable of being easily crumbled; the soft part of bread. Opposed to crust." Granted, it's not often I see this usage, but it does exist.

I thought for sure I'd posted about this before, but if so I can't find it. Most other bread-eating cultures do: The Standard German word is Krume--the word for "crumb" in the sense of "small piece" is Brosame--and dialectal variants of both these words are legion. Spanish has miga, an obvious cognate to mie, and Catalan mica means not only this but also "a little" (i.e. where Spanish would use un poco).

More words as they occur to me; like "the yummy crust of cooked rice", this is one of those words that I've made a point of seeking out and noting when I come upon it.

[ruakh]

> More words as they occur to me; like "the yummy crust of cooked rice", this is one of those words that I've made a point of seeking out and noting when I come upon it.

Does English have a word for that? In Bukharian it's something like /tsadigi/, which has been borrowed into Hebrew (at least, among the Bukhari) and now into English (at least, among my immediate family).

[muckefuck]

Not as far as I know, but plenty of other languages do. That Bokhari word is reminiscent of Tehrani Persian tahdig (lit. "bottom pot").

[ruakh]

Yeah, I'd assume it's cognate. (The Bukhari might actually be /tadigi/, I can never decide.)

[rag_and_bone]

mmmmm. i just read through all the comments, so i don't have anything to contribute factually that someone else hasn't already said. but this sure did make me hungry.

[wwidsith]

Heheh. Living in a gluten-free household as I now do, bread has become like a secret indulgence for me. I kind of mythologise it.

[rag_and_bone]

i knoooooooow. i rarely eat bread. and now i'm not sure i ever should (i feel much better sans gluten!), but it's so romantic to me. dipped in olive oil and rosemary. yuuuuuuuuuuum.

[muckefuck]

Found some more translations for you: Greek: ψίχα, ψίχουλο (psícha, psíchoulo), Hungarian: kenyérbél ("bread innards"), Italian: mollica (from molle "soft"), Portuguese: miolo (de pão) (lit. "marrow (of bread)").

[wwidsith]

YOU are a goddamn LEGEND.