A friend dined out at Volt and ordered a couple bottles of wine. The first was $80. The second was considerably cheaper, maybe $40.
When the bill arrived, her horrified husband asked if she'd realized the price of the $80 bottle when she'd ordered.
She briefly considered lying, but then confessed: "Yes. I was momentarily intimidated by the sommelier, but I recovered."
In this week's Shallow Thought Wednesdays post, John Lindner tells us there's a word for that: vintimidation.
Here's John. LV
Do you dunandunate? I know I do.
To dunandunate is to overuse a word or phrase recently added to your vocabulary – I paraphrase from this unbylined story in the Telegraph.co.uk that pries opens the Oxford English Dictionary's vault of not-yet-accepted words.
By that august body's lights neither you nor I "officially" dunandunate, because "dunandunate" is not recognized as a real word by the keepers of the OED – the holy writ of the Queen's English. Too bad, because this secret stash of coinage brims with desperately needed neologisms, many ripe for foodie assimilation.
I like this one: "Freegan – someone who rejects consumerism, usually by eating discarded food." My new politically correct name for Dumpster divers.
Here's one whose rejection from the canon surprises me: "Locavor – a person who tries to eat only locally grown or produced food." My guess is this term shows up in an upcoming OED version. Prof. McIntyre, I yield the floor ...
I love this one: “Peppier – a waiter whose sole job is to offer diners ground pepper, usually from a large pepper mill.”
"Wibble – the trembling of the lower lip just shy of actually crying." Not necessarily a foodie term (though it could happen often enough if you tend to pick up the tab in high-end restaurants), but I like it.
"Dringle – the watermark left by a glass of liquid."
This calls for a haiku, but instead I offer my own ten new food terms and, of course, invite you to enlist your own epicurean neologisms which I promise to dunandunate to the fullest extent allowed by state law:
1. Trendivore – Nomadic habitue of newly designated hip eateries.
2. Zuchinundated – overwhelmed by a much larger than anticipated crop from a small home garden.
3. Roont – an overcooked burger.
4. Vintimidation – Fear of ordering the wrong wine.
5. Wheylaid – momentarily shocked by the olfactory assault of strong cheese.
6. Debambinated – the ability to eat once cute animals without a trace of guilt.
7. Menupity – the feeling of wanting to like a restaurant owned or staffed by sincerely nice people that badly fails to live up to its potential.
8. Spamulent – the quality of having been processed from unspecified "parts".
9. Omnibus – a server who takes your order, delivers your food and clears the table after you leave.
10. Amnesiagraphic – a server suffering from the inability to remember orders without writing them down.
Chicago Tribune photo