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")
J.W. Brewer said,
March 26, 2025 @ 7:29 am
A potentially relevant "usage note" from wiktionary's entry on "hose," although obviously archaism need not be a sufficient reason to avoid a pun:
"(garment covering legs) Formerly a male garment covering the lower body, with the upper body covered by a doublet. By the 16th century hose had separated into two garments, stocken and breeches. Since the 1920s, hose refers mostly to women's stockings or pantyhose."
In German, of course, "Hose[n]" remains the cromulent way to say "trousers."
Joe said,
March 26, 2025 @ 7:32 am
Bros before Hoes: it's a hip hop thing: https://youtu.be/BCkxXPVW4d0?si=AqxebvMmLBSmYdak
And this: https://youtu.be/-lpHAtmOvkw?si=LiOHRREFdsodJCfa
Jerry Packard said,
March 26, 2025 @ 8:13 am
Y’all got hosed, bros.
Robot Therapist said,
March 26, 2025 @ 8:46 am
I also remember atholl brose. Google tells me "atholl brose is a Scottish drink made with oatmeal brose, honey, whisky, and sometimes cream"
Victor Mair said,
March 26, 2025 @ 8:48 am
I have friends and colleagues who are surnamed Brose.
House of Names
https://www.houseofnames.com/brose-family-crest
=====
Brose is an ancient Norman name that arrived in England after the Norman Conquest of 1066. The Brose family lived in Normandy. The exact location of the place from which the family name is derived is under dispute, as one may perhaps expect of such a prominent name. The traditional interpretation is that the name is derived from the place-name Brix, in La Manche. It is argued, however, that there is no real evidence in support of this, and that the name is actually derived from the place-name Le Brus, in Calvados. 1 A surname based upon an already existing place-name is called a habitation name.
=====
Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brose_(surname)
Victor Mair said,
March 26, 2025 @ 9:01 am
brosy / brosey
From brose + -y, from brose (“oatmeal mixed with boiling water”); from the Doric dialect of northeast Scotland.
brosy (comparative more brosy, superlative most brosy)
1. (Scotland) In rural and farming circles, stout and strong; well-built; well fed with brose.
2. Semiliquid.
3. Containing brose.
Derived terms
brosy-faced
References
brosey, American Encyclopedic Dictionary, by Robert Hunter, John Alfred Williams, Sidney John Hervon Herrtage, 1897.
(Wiktionary)
J.W. Brewer said,
March 26, 2025 @ 9:47 am
FWIW, the earliest definitely-correctly-dated hit for "bros before hos" I can find in the google books corpus is 1998, in the "Language and Gender" chapter of _Gender on Campus: Issues for College Women_ by Sharon Bohn Gmelch. It's used an example of a "sexist comment" in a way that seems to assume it would already sound reasonably familiar to the book's target audience as previously disseminated in ways not captured by the google books corpus. So even if the ultimate origin was specific to hiphop subculture it had spread out into broader youth culture by then.
Both purported 20th-century hits for the alternative spelling "bros before hoes" turned out to be 21st-century texts with bad metadata. I'm not sure if any prescriptivists and/or journalistic stylebooks have addressed the "hos" versus "hoes" orthographic variation and decreed which is the One Correct Way that all must follow. (The origin of both variations is obviously eye-dialect for a particular non-rhotic pronunciation of "whores" but it seems quite plausible that a distinct lexeme with distinct semantics eventually emerged.)
Yves Rehbein said,
March 26, 2025 @ 11:07 am
I knew a Mr. Brose. The digital familyname dictionary of German (DFD – Digitales Familiennamenwörterbuch Deutschlands) derives the name from a West-Slavic form of Ambrosius, from Greek "immortal". Heuser, Rita, Brose, in: DFD http://www.namenforschung.net/id/name/1949/1
How fitting, ambrosia is the food of immortal gods.
Catherine Sangster said,
March 26, 2025 @ 12:48 pm
OED's policy would certainly be to give a word such as brose a Scottish English pronunciation as well as the British and US ones you've included. I will remedy this asap!
It'd be /broz/ (in our transcription model for Scottish English, see
https://www.oed.com/information/understanding-entries/pronunciation/world-englishes/scottish-english/)
The DEWED pun doesn't work for me (duːd vs djuːd or dʒuːd)
Benjamin E. Orsatti said,
March 26, 2025 @ 1:17 pm
(1) Neat! The Log has caught the attention of the OED!
(2) Do Britishers pronounce "dude" the same as the proper name, Jude?
(3) If so, how's come Americans say, /sek-shu-al/, while Elton John says (sings?) /seks-u-al/? (see "Candle in the Wind"). Wouldn't the sh/zh/dzh rule apply there too?
Philip Taylor said,
March 26, 2025 @ 1:51 pm
Do Britishers pronounce "dude" the same as the proper name, Jude ? — certainly not all Britons, Benjamin. For this Briton, "dude" has a /d/ onset and a y-glide, while "Jude" has a /dʒ/ onset and no y-glide.
Benjamin Ernest Orsatti said,
March 26, 2025 @ 2:20 pm
Thanks, Philip. I don't think my 'lect has a y-glide; in fact, I hadn't even been aware that such a thing existed until I encountered it in Lusoga (a Bantu language), where I could only make heads or tails of it by thinking of it as a "middle-of-tongue-against-upper-palate-'j'".
Jonathan Smith said,
March 26, 2025 @ 3:08 pm
Re dude etc., cf. "Why is Henry's wife covered in tooth marks? Because he's Tudor" (Adele Cliff), which is pretty near opaque in the US.
J.W. Brewer said,
March 26, 2025 @ 5:47 pm
1. I find the "DEWED pun" so underwhelming that I can't be arsed (as I believe they say over in the British Isles) to think about how it does or doesn't work in various dialects of English.
2. To one of Benjamin E. Orsatti's points, I personally believe that the normative pronunciation of "sexual" is that enunciated by the late Marvin Gaye in "Sexual Healing" (admittedly enunciated in a recording studio in Belgium due to weird dysfunctional-music-biz reasons), even if I suspect they probably pronounce it otherwise in Pittsburgh because of course they would.
Benjamin E. Orsatti said,
March 27, 2025 @ 7:19 am
I'd agree that the late, great Marvin's pronunciation is normative, but there's still no y-glide: https://youtu.be/rjlSiASsUIs?t=40
Interestingly, Sir Elton's pronunciation doesn't comport with my memory of it. Here, it sounds more like the disyllable /sek-syul/ https://youtu.be/MYU3F8uUGiw?t=171 , which, if you turn the y-glide into a /sh/ and velarize the "l", you get (this one's for you, J.W.) the Pittsburgh version, especially where the word is unaccented, as in /sek-shu(w) ha-RÆSS-munt/.
ardj said,
March 27, 2025 @ 9:12 am
The OED UK pronunciation sounds weird to me. At normal speed, it sounds like a somewhat effete pronunciation of "bread". Slowed right down, there may possible be an s at the end, but to my failing ears it still sounds like "bray – ose", and even there the 's' sound is more a closing of the mouth.
In Scots the 's' becomes a 'z', and the vowel is much purer (though that may just be Edinburgh boasting)
Sorry for delay.
David Marjanović said,
March 27, 2025 @ 12:51 pm
Yes; using the plural (-n) to mean a single pair is probably extinct by now. (Part of a wider trend: Brille sg. "glasses", Schere sg. "scissors", Pinzette sg. "tweezers" and so on.)
You can find Britons who pronounce issue with /ʃ/, others who use /ʃj/, and yet others who use entirely unassimilated /sj/. Some hypercorrectivism may be involved.
KevinM said,
March 28, 2025 @ 4:16 pm
And of course a person using any of the variant spellings ("Bruce, Brus (Gaelic), Bruys, Bruse and others") would be a Brose by any other name..
Philip Taylor said,
March 29, 2025 @ 8:28 am
Benjamin — "Thanks, Philip. I don't think my 'lect has a y-glide" — I lay in bed and thought about this for quite a while, and while I can see that (for example) one could easily pronounce "dude" as "dood" if one were brought up in a location where such pronunciations were deemed normal, there are some other words where I cannot imagine a pronunciation that does not include a y-glide. My examples include "bureacracy", "beauty", "Cuba", "cute", "few", "fuel", "hue", "humid", "mute", "newt", "pewter", "queue", "ensue", "Tudor", "tutor", "view" and "yew". I obviously don't expect a full IPA transcription for each in return, but if you could indicate for just a few how you would pronounce them, I would be most interested.
Robert Coren said,
March 29, 2025 @ 9:42 am
@Philip Taylor: No y-glide in "Tudor" or "tutor" for me, and I suspect that's the case for most of my US compatriots. I wouldn't put "view" and "yew" in that list, because the /j/ is right there in the spelling.
Rodger C said,
March 29, 2025 @ 10:40 am
Philip, I pronounce all those words with a y-glide except "newt." this is a general rule about apicals in American.
Philip Taylor said,
March 29, 2025 @ 2:11 pm
Not being a linguist by profession, I readily admit that I may have used the phrase "y-glide" loosely, but in my defence may I say that to my ear the sound in "view" (after the initial /v/, of course) is indistinguishable from the corresponding sound in (e.g.,) "beauty", etc.
Jarek Weckwerth said,
March 29, 2025 @ 3:56 pm
@Philip Taylor, Rodger C: The usual description is, no /j/ after apicals in most American accents, as Rodger says, thus no /j/ in sue, due, tune, new. But most accents everywhere would have /j/ after other onsets, e.g. /f/ or /v/ or /k/ etc.
Regarding word-medial positions, well, I would consider /j/ in sexual etc. hypercorrect/old-fashioned but it certainly does exist. Wells gives it as the second option.
J.W. Brewer said,
March 29, 2025 @ 5:19 pm
Jarek Weckwerth's various examples with and without /j/ accurately describe my own American idiolect, if you assume that I am in fact neither hypercorrect nor old-fashioned about matters sexual, or at least not about the pronunciation of the word. One possible complication (and perhaps this has been solved upthread and I was too thick to understand it) is having the "y-glide" after /v/ in e.g. "view" but not in e.g "voodoo." "Few" versus "food" presents the same contrast, as does "queue" versus "cool." Is this as simple as saying that back in the times of Chaucer or whoever, some syllables with the ancestor of the GOOSE vowel has a y-glide after the initial consonant but others didn't, and some of those historical y-glides have been lost in some regional accents while others haven't but the words that didn't have a y-glide in Chaucer's time don't have one now in any regional accent?
Philip Taylor said,
March 30, 2025 @ 2:59 am
/j/ is by no means universal in sue in British English, Jarek (more common when it as a verb rather than a girl’s name), but a definite /j/ in ensue.
V said,
March 30, 2025 @ 1:35 pm
Philip Taylor: English is my second language, but I don't have the [j] in "bureacracy" and "newt".
V said,
March 30, 2025 @ 1:41 pm
No [j] in sue either.
Terry K. said,
March 30, 2025 @ 1:43 pm
I'm puzzled by the statement by Benjamin Ernest Orsatti "I don't think my 'lect has a y-glide". I would assume he's talking about English, since he doesn't indicate otherwise. And it sounds like he's talking about in general, not just before a /u/. Is he making a distinction between y as a consonant (like the word "yes") and what he refers to as a y-glide? If so, what's the distinction?
V said,
March 30, 2025 @ 1:53 pm
Philip Taylor: "ensue" is with a stress on the second syllable for me. [en'sju]
Philip Taylor said,
March 30, 2025 @ 2:28 pm
Unglided "newt" seems quote possible — "noot" in simple transcription, /nuːt/ in IPA, but what sound (ideally expressed in IPA) do you make for the opening syllable of "bureaucracy", V ?
V said,
March 30, 2025 @ 3:54 pm
Philip Taylor: I really have no idea. Somewhere between ɤ and ɵ?
Philip Taylor said,
March 31, 2025 @ 6:08 am
So if closer to the former, something like French beurre ?
Benjamin E. Orsatti said,
April 1, 2025 @ 10:18 am
Philip Taylor said:
Whoops. Looks like I've been practicing linguistics without a license again. Let me amend: All of the above )would) have a y-glide, except for "newt", "ensue", "Tudor", "tutor", and I wouldn't count "yew", 'cause it's got a y right there lookin' atcha.
Rodger C said,
April 1, 2025 @ 11:39 am
I should also have said that I don't have a y-glide in "ensue," "Tudor" and :tutor,"; I read the list initially when very tired.
Philip Taylor said,
April 1, 2025 @ 2:38 pm
Yes, sorry about the "yew" — I was working my way throuogh the alphabet, trying to find an example of a y-glide in a word beginning with each letter, and by the time I reached "y" my brain was pretty much dead … But I could substitute "ewe", if you like !
Benjamin E. Orsatti said,
April 1, 2025 @ 3:12 pm
…he said, sheepishly.
Robert Coren said,
April 2, 2025 @ 11:13 am
It seems to me that "ew" acts differently from other combinations – see also few, dew, hew, and pew, all of which have y-glide in just about any idiolect (although not necessarily Jew, and certainly not new).
Terry K. said,
April 3, 2025 @ 10:49 am
dew has no y-glide for me. It sounds just like the stressed form of do.