Noticed as an ingredient in a chicken salad at Gordon Biersch restaurant today: craisins. Wikipedia tells us:
Dried cranberries are made by partially dehydrating fresh cranberries, a process similar to making grapes into raisins. They are popular in trail mix, salads, and breads, with cereals or eaten on their own. Dried cranberries are sometimes referred to as “craisins,” though the word “craisin” is a registered trademark of Ocean Spray Cranberries, Inc. and cannot be officially applied to dried cranberries from other manufacturers.
But still people go on to use the portmanteau.
Without some context to back it up, craisin is hard to interpret: the raisin part is clear enough, but the cran- piece of cranberry is hard to recover from the /kr/, or even the spelling CRA-. Not a great coining, but then I have no better idea.
October 4, 2012 at 7:53 pm |
[…] Prucot, de l’anglais plumcot est, comme son nom le dit, un fruit hybride résultant du croisement d’un abricot et d’une prune. En anglais on hésite entre le terme apriplum ou plumcot. Il y a des variétés de croisements naturels et de croisements controlés par l’homme. Il semble que l’existence de ce fruit ait été découvert il y a plus d’un siècle et que le terme plumcot ait été créé par un botaniste américain du nom de Luther Burbank selon wikipédia. Le terme n’est toujours pas dans les dictionnaires Le Petit Robert et Oxford English Dictionnary, je doute qu’il le sera un jour, mais les supermarchés en vantaient cet été l’originalité et le goût très sucré! Je le vois plutôt comme un nom de produit de marque du même genre que slimcado ou craisins. […]
October 5, 2012 at 9:42 am |
1. To the French speaker above, I’ll note that there IS a fruit in English referred to as a “pluot,” a cross between plum and apricot. Also related — an industry group trying to promote use of term “dried plum” instead of “prune,” which has an unfortunate connotation with constipated old folks (hey, I’m not the one saying it; I like prunes)
2. I wonder if the term “cremains” (cremated + remains) is similarly hard to interpret without context?
October 6, 2012 at 11:18 am |
Craisins sounds like crazy raisins to me; I would never have thought of cranberries.
April 5, 2013 at 9:42 am |
[…] kale with blueberries, toasted smoked almonds, Craisins and feta cheese tossed in lemon […]