4 ms·

I might not have changed in sound or meaning, but in English English in England it is very, very rarely used. We might know what it means from US TV, but you'd

I might not have changed in sound or meaning, but in English English in England it is very, very rarely used. We might know what it means from US TV, but you'd never see it on a menu* or supermarket label. Does it still count if it's fallen out of use? * I realise someone will google and find it on a UK menu now.

OJFord 6y ago
Gravadlax/gravlax is common though.
- skykooler 6y ago
  Is that salmon with extra...gravity?
  - kzrdude 6y ago
    Salmon from the grave! Almost. Buried in salt and sugar and cured that way.
usrusr 6y ago
Makes me wonder whether it has actually survived in English, in that culinary niche, or was just readopted from some other language that immigrated to America in parallel and happened to bring a dish with them that was named after the word for the animal in that language. Kind of similar to how livestock remained Germanic in English when the meat dishes derived from them migrated to French/Latin roots. Ironically triggered by Normans who only switched from a Germanic language to French a few generations earlier (at most). Languages are entirely unlike species, they keep cross-fertilizing whenever they are not physically isolated.
- Izkata 6y ago
  Personally, I'm kinda leaning towards a cross between readopted and persisted through trivia (akin to how everyone knows "a group of crows is called a murder" despite not typically being used in normal speech, but more locale-specific than that example): Chicago area, I know I've encountered "laks", I think I've seen "lachs", but I don't recall "lox" at all.
- bodhiandpysics1 6y ago
  It reentered english through yiddish, though the word lox was also used by scandinavian immigrants in the upper midwest. Laks is the word in old english, but like many food words only eaten by the upper classes (beef, venison, poultry, pork, sausage) was displaced by the norman salmon.
samatman 6y ago
The headline is cheating a bit. It's an English word, and it is (believed to be) pronounced the same as in PIE: but it's also a loanword from Yiddish. Everyone in the New York metro area, and most people along the East Coast or large metro areas around the US, will know the word lox. That's going to be about as many people as in the whole of England, it surely counts as a word in English, as much as "hoon" or "anorak". But it hasn't been a word along the entire life track from PIE to modern English. It was preserved in Germanic languages and reintroduced later.

OJFord 6y ago

Gravadlax/gravlax is common though.

skykooler 6y ago
Is that salmon with extra...gravity?
- kzrdude 6y ago
  Salmon from the grave! Almost. Buried in salt and sugar and cured that way.

usrusr 6y ago

Makes me wonder whether it has actually survived in English, in that culinary niche, or was just readopted from some other language that immigrated to America in parallel and happened to bring a dish with them that was named after the word for the animal in that language. Kind of similar to how livestock remained Germanic in English when the meat dishes derived from them migrated to French/Latin roots. Ironically triggered by Normans who only switched from a Germanic language to French a few generations earlier (at most). Languages are entirely unlike species, they keep cross-fertilizing whenever they are not physically isolated.

Izkata 6y ago
Personally, I'm kinda leaning towards a cross between readopted and persisted through trivia (akin to how everyone knows "a group of crows is called a murder" despite not typically being used in normal speech, but more locale-specific than that example): Chicago area, I know I've encountered "laks", I think I've seen "lachs", but I don't recall "lox" at all.
bodhiandpysics1 6y ago
It reentered english through yiddish, though the word lox was also used by scandinavian immigrants in the upper midwest. Laks is the word in old english, but like many food words only eaten by the upper classes (beef, venison, poultry, pork, sausage) was displaced by the norman salmon.

samatman 6y ago

The headline is cheating a bit. It's an English word, and it is (believed to be) pronounced the same as in PIE: but it's also a loanword from Yiddish. Everyone in the New York metro area, and most people along the East Coast or large metro areas around the US, will know the word lox. That's going to be about as many people as in the whole of England, it surely counts as a word in English, as much as "hoon" or "anorak". But it hasn't been a word along the entire life track from PIE to modern English. It was preserved in Germanic languages and reintroduced later.