Horseradish

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, Martha and Grant. This is Grace from Burlington, Vermont.

Well, hello, Grace. Welcome.

Hi, Grace. Welcome to the show.

Thank you.

What’s going on in Burlington?

Well, I was wondering if you could tell me about the word horseradish.

What would you like to know about it?

Where does it come from?

My husband brought one home this summer, and we’ve used a jar of stuff before,

But I’d never actually seen one.

And suddenly I felt like I know where the word comes from.

Oh, yeah?

Yeah, well, he disagrees.

But I think it’s because the horseradish itself is shaped much like a horse’s appendage.

And perhaps my mind is in the gutter, but I thought perhaps that’s where it comes from.

So I was hoping you could enlighten us.

This is a root vegetable, right?

Yes.

I think so. I haven’t seen it growing, but it is very tuber-like.

Okay, and your idea is that it’s called that because it looks like the member of a horse, an equine member, so to speak.

Exactly.

Fortunately, we don’t have to talk about that anymore because that’s actually not the origin of the word.

You’re disappointed.

But you do have a dirty mind. We can confirm that for you.

And your husband should feel blessed because of that.

But no, actually, there are a number of food-related words, interesting enough, that all have the horse in there somewhere.

And it generally means a rough, crude, or large kind of thing.

So if you have horse parsley, it’s a rough, crude kind of parsley or horse nettle, that kind of thing.

And the horse radish is the same thing because we have other kinds of radishes that are, you know, more petite and prim and stuff.

And they’re just not as like, it’s kind of brutish-looking root, isn’t it?

It’s like rough and stuff.

Yeah, it doesn’t have the smooth exterior of, say, a red radish.

Well, how big is it, Grace?

I mean, I guess now that you mention it, I’ve only seen it in the jar all chopped up.

The one we had was maybe about a foot tall.

Oh, wow.

Yeah, it was big.

What are you cooking with that?

We didn’t.

It sort of sat in the fridge and shriveled up, and then we composted it.

Oh, well, that’s not a bad life for a radish, I guess.

I don’t care for horseradish myself.

But, you know, if you get a chance, just a little bit of shaving of horseradish, not too much,

On top of perfectly ordinary pasta will do amazing things with it.

Really?

And some dishes, not like drinks, but like some food dishes where they call for lemon zest,

Use just a little bit of scraping of horseradish instead, and you’ll also find that works.

Oh, that’s a good idea.

Yeah, that’s going to take a long time, though, with a foot-long horseradish.

Well, you know, that sounds like a community.

That’s not a family-sized vegetable.

That’s a community-sized vegetable.

We need to share that with the neighbors.

Okay.

Well, now, Grant, the idea of horse being large, like a horseradish being a really large one,

Is that the same idea that we see in, say, horse pill, you know,

When you take one of those giant pills that you can hardly get down?

Yeah, because have you seen a horse pill?

A horse pill is big.

They’re monstrously huge.

Yeah.

They look like a loaf of bread.

I mean, I’m exaggerating, but they’re really big.

There is one theory that apparently in German there’s a,

And I’m not even going to try to pronounce this word,

Which one of the dialects of German has a word that also means mares radish for this exact same vegetable.

And so there’s the idea that this is related to horses actually exists in other languages.

So although I speak with firmness and I speak with conviction about the fact this does not have anything to do with a horse appendage,

We do find that at least one other language, that vegetable is connected to horses.

So for what that’s worth.

And it’s probably not that they eat them.

It’s probably just the size or the roughness of them, huh?

I don’t think these have ever been typical horse fodder.

They’re just too hard to cultivate.

Okay.

Well, Grace, you do sound disappointed that it’s not, that your theory didn’t pan out.

Well, I like to be right.

And it would have been a fun sort of etymological origin.

But thank you.

I do appreciate knowing the answer.

Sure.

All right.

Well, thanks for calling, Grace.

Best of luck.

Thank you. You too.

All right. Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

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