English is a Strange Beast

[tamakun]

Hey, I just had this thought...

We "microwave" foods, right? But the actual appliance is called a microwave. On that same note, we don't "fridge" items when we put them in the fridge, nor do we "oven" foods in the oven...

Comments

[ravenworks.livejournal.com]

On the other hand, the full name is a 'refridgerator', and we do indeed refridgerate things :)

[tamakun.livejournal.com]

Oooh, you got me there :D

[ravenworks.livejournal.com]

And the real name of an "oven" is a "cook things in it so that you may eat them later on"!

...

... or maybe not? :D

[yumelady.livejournal.com]

fridge= refridgerator = yes we refridgerate things...someone beat me to it. But I wonder if we researched the origins of the word "oven" since it is a much older term maybe we would come across something similar lost in language and time? A fridge is a fairly new appliance and so therefore the evolution of the word is better documented ^_^

[ravenworks.livejournal.com]

and a lot more straightforward, too. :P The different forms of the word haven't had as much time to grow apart from each other (though they already have a little, hence 'fridge'...)

[lordshipmayhem.livejournal.com]

We roast in a roaster, fry in a fryer or frypan, freeze in a freezer, refrigerate in a refrigerator and blend in a blender, but we microwave in a microwave oven, bake in a regular oven and barbecue on a barbecue. There seems to be no special term for baking in a convection oven as opposed to a conventional one.

And of course some people refer to "nuking" food in a microwave oven, which makes one expect the stuff will be glowing in the dark from radioactivity when cooked.

Yes, English can be a funny language sometimes.

[seangaffney.livejournal.com]

Does this segue into driving on the parkway and parking on the driveway, Mr. Carlin? :)

[liradralyn.livejournal.com]

I guess it's because the concept of cooking was around before the oven itself was invented, so there was already a verb for it. But the microwave invented a whole new way of preparing food, so we had to make up a new verb for it and the easiest thing to do was take the noun and put "to" in front of it

[ginny-t.livejournal.com]

Then there's the fact that the microwave heats foods using microwaves, so it really should be a "microwaver", and then microwaving food would be back to making sense.