18 Comments

1. 

   It’s not directly relevant to this strip, but “jumbo shrimp” is one of the classic examples of an oxymoron.

2. 

   –I went there, the service was lousy.
   –The waiters had lice?!

3. 

   Right, what we really want is for “shrimp scampi” to mean ” a dish of shrimp or prawns grilled or sautéed in oil or butter and garlic” BY VIRTUE OF “shrimp” naming the seafood critters and independently “scampi” naming the style “grilled or sautéed in oil or butter and garlic” in a way that could in principle be applied to other foods, say “meatballs scampi”. But this perfected scheme is spoiled by the claim that “scampi” by itself could be the name for the whole concept, foodstuff and preparation style together.

4. 

   Shrimp scampi is usually, in my experience, a shrimp-and-noodle dish with garlic butter sauce.
   So the joke is a play on words, and the skimped the shrimp. Not really a CIDU for me.

5. 

   @ Maggie – That’s exactly why Mitch tagged this post “Not a CIDU“. :-)

6. 

   The recent Spiderverse movie has a Spiderman from India complaining about people saying “chai tea” and “naan bread”

7. 

   @ W.W. (6) – It’s a real shame that “Torpenhow Hill” has been debunked.

8. 

   I guessed from the final vowel that “scampi” should be plural, and that the singular form of the Italian name would be “scampo“, but that Wikipedia article reveals that this is merely one of several regional Italian names for the same species of prawn (Nephrops norvegicus), and it doesn’t mention any culinary details at all. The name of the dish “Shrimp Scampi” is therefore more English† than Italian, and cannot be identified as a pleonasm merely on the basis of its Italian orthography.

   P.S. † – Much like the authentic “Chinese” origins of “chop suey”.

9. 

   All the same, I would rather not have my clothes mangled.

   ---

   OTHER DEFINITIONS FOR MANGLE (2 OF 2)
   mangle2
   / ˈmæŋ gəl /

   noun
   a machine for smoothing or pressing clothes, household linen, etc., by means of heated rollers.

   verb (used with object),man·gled, man·gling.
   to smooth or press with a mangle.

   Metalworking. to squeeze (metal plates) between rollers.

10. 

    I’ve heard “measly” as meaning “small” or “few” as in “we only got three measly votes” or “there was just one measly little potato.”

11. 

    Mark, yes that is surely the more familiar use of measly. That is how come the sense connected with actual measles is definition #2.

12. 

    @ Mitch (9) – “Die Mangel” is the German term for a variety of similar devices. The original intent of the “cold” designs was just to squeeze excess water out of the fabric; pressing or ironing was originally a side effect, which later became the primary objective of the more modern “hot” designs.

    P.S. The word “(der) Mangel” (note the change in gender) also has a second (probably unrelated) meaning in German: “defect” or “insufficience”.

13. 

    No matter what cookery books may say, or what names people might use, scampi are not prawns, they are lobsters.

14. 

    @MiB – that’s the only use of “measly” I’ve ever encountered.

15. 

    @Mike, I have seen through your disguise! You are Lewis Carroll and I claim my ten pounds!

    “’When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’”

16. 

    And then there’s the mangel wurzel, a sort of edible wild beet.

17. 

    When I was a volunteer for our local Recording for the Blind, once I worked on a couple chapters of Capital (this was long before the Thomas Piketty book existed — it was Das Kapital by Karl Marx, in English translation). There was a long study of the supply of vegetables to somewhere like Manchester or Birmingham before and after certain legislation. And that was where I first heard about mangel-wurzels.

18. 

    But by whatever the definition of scampi is – a shrimp, a lobster, a dish with same – it is better than it being skimpy. :-)