Brose
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Today's SMBC:
The mouseover title: "If you mix beer and oatmeal, it's Frat Brose."
The Aftercomic:
(Scotland) Oatmeal mixed with boiling water or milk.
The OED's gloss:
A dish made by pouring boiling water (or milk) on oatmeal (or oat-cake) seasoned with salt and butter. Hence brose-meal, brose-time, etc.
The OED's UK pronunciation:
THe OED's U.S. pronunciation:
Seems like they should have a Scots pronunciation — would a reader from Scotland like to contribute one to us?
The entry in the Dictionary of the Older Scottish Tongue (up to 1700) gives the gloss 'Oatmeal with boiling water added". The entry in the Scottish National Dictionary (1700–) gives a more elaborate recipe, followed by a larger number of senses. The basic entry:
A dish made by mixing boiling water or milk with oatmeal or peasemeal, and adding salt and butter. The mixture may be only roughly stirred up so as to leave lumps. Oatmeal brose had sometimes the addition of the skimmed fat of soup.
Update: From Jonathan Smith in the comments:
JPL said,
March 25, 2025 @ 7:26 pm
Contrasting tongue movement on the tense vowel. To the front vs to the back, raising in both. (Since that doesn't happen in some other languages, why does it happen in English, and why the differences?) Does the same thing happen in the pronunciation of, e.g., "tech bros"? (Keeping regional variants, incl Scots, constant) Does "dewed" work for the UK pun attempt? I don't get the last panel. What's the prosody in the first panel (no comma)?
Jonathan Smith said,
March 25, 2025 @ 9:01 pm
IDK how Scots as opposed to Scottish English, but Scot Scran – Episode 1: Brose… who turn out to have been first to the punchline in the comic by 8 years in the form "brose before [gardening] hoes", goodonegoodone
J.W. Brewer said,
March 26, 2025 @ 12:10 am
For the perhaps mysterious-to-many "peasemeal" see this: https://www.fondazioneslowfood.com/en/ark-of-taste-slow-food/peasemeal/
There is obviously some connection to the "pease porridge" that is still known as a NP to Anglophone nursery-rhyme fanciers but much more rarely actually eaten these days. It is of course now Lent and pease porridge was a staple dish for Anglophones observing Lent well into the 17th century (it pops up in Pepys' diaries, IIRC), but now it is degraded among linguistics folks to a mere case-study in historical misanalysis/reanalysis (with the singular count noun "pea" arising from a misconstrual of "pease" as a plural count noun).
Arthur Baker said,
March 26, 2025 @ 3:49 am
From my younger days in the north-east of England (Newcastle upon Tyne) I recall pease pudding, a dish I found unappetising but filling. It really was made from (a kind of) peas. Wikipedia describes it as "a savoury pudding dish made of boiled legumes, typically split yellow peas". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pease_pudding
Jacob Stewart said,
March 26, 2025 @ 6:57 am
I assumed "hose" meant a shower (as in "hosing yourself")