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- Herausgeber: Biteback Publishing
- Kategorie: Lebensstil
- Sprache: Englisch
To avoid repetition, journalists often try to be creative when referencing something for the second time in a news article – for example, Boris Johnson at the first mention could become 'the blond buffoon' at the second mention, while Donald Trump could become 'the bloviating billionaire' (with extra points for alliteration!) Once you see one, you start seeing them everywhere – and it becomes addictive. This grammatical tool, christened 'elegant variation', is used by journalists trying to avoid making their articles boring through repetition, but its use is not an exact science and the results can sometimes be hilarious. Every day, the Second Mentions team is sent examples of these, spotted by journalists who are keen to point out shining examples used by their fellow writers (or sometimes claiming responsibility for their own efforts!) and non-journalists who enjoy the simple pleasure of happening upon these 'second mentions' while reading news articles. And so, from distended dachshunds to marine marauders, and from 5ft 1in. nonagenarians to pear-shaped money-guzzlers, The Little Book of Second Mentions is the perfect gift for everyone with an inventive passion for the English language – from those with a general interest in current affairs to those working in the media.
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“As a journalist for twenty-five years, I have spent a quarter of a century as a reporter trying to find alternative ways of saying the same thing in different forms. This is a very funny book and a humorous collection of printed pages that should be invaluable to any newshound – with or without 9,131 days’ experience.”
Matt Chorley, BBC Radio 5 Live
“This is an extremely funny idea.”
Victoria Coren Mitchell,Daily Telegraph
“Finally! A book that celebrates the glorious prose of the nation’s journalists in a way that I’m sure is definitely not taking the piss at all.”
Sophy Ridge, Sky News
“A great idea that celebrates the art of the journalistic quest to avoid repetition. The Little Book of Second Mentions is my favourite less-than-vast agglomeration of pages in print this year.”
Tim Shipman,The Spectator
“The Little Book of Second Mentions is a delightful book for anyone who loves words, and in particular anyone who enjoys spotting the silly knots we journalists tie ourselves in to avoid repeating ourselves.”
Stephen Bush,Financial Times
“I can’t think of a better loo read than The Little Book of Second Mentions. The frisky fun-sized compendium should be on all Christmas and birthday lists.” ii
Rachel Johnson, LBC
“A delightful love letter to journalism in all its excesses and silliness.”
Charlotte Ivers,Sunday Times
“Without the mini phenomenon of second mentions, British journalism would grind to a complete halt. This book isn’t just a definitive, overdue exploration – it’s a celebration.”
Adam Hurrey,Football Clichés andThe Athletic
“Huge fun and a loving tribute to the great age of the Fleet Street journalist. Or should that be ‘the scribe of paper-based news’?”
Harry Wallop,The Times
“A genius – and hilarious – compendium of serial synonymic spiralling. If cows to you are ‘pasture-adjacent milk engines’, then this book is essential for satisfying your thesaurophilia. Certainly worth reading twice.”
Craig Glenday,GuinnessWorld Records
“As a notorious bespectacled travel doom-monger working for a popular London-based online news publication, I salute the creators – and collectors – of these inspired semantic alternatives.”
Simon Calder,The Independent
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To our families, with love, and to Basil, our favourite four-legged furball
vi
Contents
Introduction: first mentions
‘The elongated yellow fruit’
‘The curvy favourite’
‘The energy-rich treat’
These are all examples of second mentions, when a journalist deliberately tries to avoid repeating a word, name or phrase when referring to it for the second time. So we get things like the above for the word ‘banana’, which couldbe described somewhat plainly on its second mention in a news story as ‘the fruit’, however, some journalists like to be a little more playful with their synonyms. Another example is the humble potato, which is transformed into ‘the carb-rich root vegetable’ or ‘the starchy spud’ at second mention.
For us, spotting second mentions started out as a hobby, but it rapidly became a passion. In 2013, we set up our Second Mentions account on X (back when it was called Twitter) to share examples we found in newspapers and magazines, with the purpose of ‘celebrating the wonderful descriptive ability of the world’s journalists’. We are a husband-and-wife team and, when we started out, Juliet was a digital content editor at a national newspaper, having previously worked as a reporter for xa local newspaper in London. Matthew worked in football and rugby (and now swimming), with a knack for spotting examples in sports journalism. Our interest was sparked by some of the first examples we found: ‘the Caribbean-accented rodent star of CBeebies’ for Rastamouse and ‘the minuscule subsoil parasites’ for nematodes. Now, whenever we read a news article, after we have read the headline, our gaze immediately turns not to the first sentence but to scan the article to find the second mention. This book is intended to be a celebration of our favourites that we have spotted, or have been sent to us, over the years since we started the Second Mentions account.
So where do we find second mentions? There are certain topics and stories that are usually rife with good examples, such as articles about food (as we have seen with bananas and potatoes) or animals (particularly pigs, pandas, giraffes and hedgehogs), and we often feel disappointed when they are lacking. One article about hedgehogs featured the word ‘hedgehog’ twenty-seven times, without even a single mention of ‘the spiky creature’ or ‘the prickly animal’. Equally, there is always creativity to be found even in otherwise fairly staid politics or business articles. Tabloid newspapers and magazines tend to be a good place to start due to their more relaxed and informal writing style, but broadsheets, radio and TV programmes can also be a rich source of creative second mentions.
Second mentions have been around for hundreds of years. In ancient Greece, the poets of the time often used alternative names for gods and heroes as a way of highlighting their xiqualities and actions. In Homer’s epic TheOdyssey, the protagonist Odysseus is known as ‘the great tactician’ and ‘the sacker of cities’, while the goddess Athena’s eyes are the source of many epithets, as in ‘the bright-eyed goddess’. It is this tradition that journalists of today are emulating with their second mentions, though perhaps unwittingly.
Opinions on the usage of second mentions have been somewhat mixed: some people admire them for helping to animate a piece of writing, while others… let’s just say, do not.
H. W. and F. G. Fowler in their 1906 book TheKing’sEnglishwrote: ‘The use of pronouns is itself a form of variation, designed to avoid ungainly repetition; and we are only going one step further when, instead of either the noun or the pronoun, we use some new equivalent.’ They continue:
Many writers of the present day abound in types of variation that are not justified by expediency, and have consequently the air of cheap ornament … When the choice lies between monotonous repetition on the one hand and clumsy variation on the other, it may fairly be laid down that of two undesirable alternatives the natural is to be preferred to the artificial.
On the other hand, in an article about the Second Mentions account for the NewYorker, Naaman Zhou describes a more neurological reasoning to create ‘elegant variations’. He writes:
What makes these substitutions so sublime? Kristen Syrett, xiia professor of linguistics at Rutgers University, told me that people are instinctively drawn to second mentions because of a well-documented concept called the repeated-name penalty. This is a cognitive phenomenon, part of the way human minds process language. ‘If I say to you, “Jane walked into the living room, Jane picked up a book, Jane started to read the book”… that causes a delay in reading time,’ Syrett said. Psycholinguists have conducted experiments with eye-tracking technology, where they have watched the eyes of their subjects stumbling over these names and scanning back. The body stutters. This response, Syrett said, is ‘encoded in our brain’ – it applies as much to Japanese as it does to Spanish.
It might just be fear that causes journalists to employ a second mention, as explained by the QI account in one of our favourite posts on X.
@qikipedia
Word of the day: MONOLOGOPHOBIA – a fear of using the same word more than once in a single sentence or paragraph.
Once we had looked past the fact that they had used the word xiii‘word’ twice in the same post, we realised that not only do we suffer from this, but so do many other writers around the world, judging from the responses.
A more modern name for second mentions is ‘knobbly monsters’, a term reportedly originating from a journalist at TheSunwho was writing an article about a fatal crocodile attack. According to John Sturgis in TheSpectator: ‘By his fourth or fifth paragraph he was groping for an alternative way of describing his deadly protagonist. He settled on describing it as “a knobbly monster”. And a legend was born.’
As you might imagine, journalists are a pretty competitive bunch and some consider second mentions to be a form of sport, vying for who can squeeze the most elaborate and exquisite second mentions into their articles. There is, however, one almighty figure standing in their way: the sub-editor. The role, which is sadly becoming increasingly endangered in newsrooms, is akin to a goalkeeper, but instead of stopping goals they prevent spelling and grammar errors or other mishaps from slipping through the net to publication. When an article arrives ready to be ‘subbed’, the game is officially on. Will ‘the popular orange vegetable’ make it through to publication? Or will the weary sub-editor give a sigh, roll their eyes and edit out ‘popular’ and ‘orange’, leaving their readers only with a distinctly unsatisfying ‘the vegetable’ or, worse, just ‘it’ as the second mention for a carrot?
In Michael Frayn’s novel Towards the End of the Morning, the role of the sub-editor is described as ‘just a matter of checking xivthe facts and the spelling, crossing out the first sentence, and removing any attempts at jokes’. While it can certainly seem like that at times, in their defence sub-editors are usually working to a house style guide that sets out the publication’s stance on spelling and grammar and often lists words or phrases that are deemed unacceptable. Indeed, TheGuardianand Observerstyle guide has an entry specifically for ‘Pov’, which stands for ‘popular orange vegetable’, a ‘term coined by a Guardian journalist to depict laboured attempts to produce synonyms’. In an article on the subject, entitled ‘My synonym hell’, Guardiansub-editor Jamie Fahey writes: ‘My first instinct is to get rid; sometimes, however, I revel in the writer’s inventiveness and leave them be.’
Even if you’re not a journalist, it is likely that at some point you have consulted a thesaurus to find a different form of words to express the same thing. At school, it is drilled into us that it is boring to repeat the same word; in English lessons, we remember being taught how to liven up our creative writing with synonyms for ‘said’, ranging from more straightforward options such as ‘added’, ‘replied’ and ‘responded’ to more expressive options such as ‘shouted’, ‘exclaimed’ and ‘hissed’. Similarly, you would not continually refer to a person by their first and last names throughout an article. For example, ‘John Smith’ at the first mention becomes ‘Mr Smith’ at the second mention and then perhaps ‘the over-zealous sub-editor’ at the third mention.
However, this book is much more than a thesaurus. If you xvhave ever used one, you will know that the suggestions do not always exactly fit the context for which you need them. If you are writing about ‘rain’ for example (a fairly common occurrence for UK-based journalists), ‘precipitation’ is of course a suitable synonym for the second mention, but there are many other ways to describe more precisely the type of rain that is falling. If the rain is light, then we can use ‘mist’, ‘drizzle’ or even ‘mizzle’; if it is heavier, then ‘downpour’, ‘deluge’ or ‘monsoon’; while if it is freezing, then ‘sleet’, ‘snow’ or ‘hail’.
Writing is a craft, and the examples we have chosen in this book demonstrate a much deeper understanding of words than a thesaurus is able to achieve. The joy of the English language is that there are so many different ways for writers to express themselves, and we embrace their creativity. This book is a celebration of their efforts. It is surely only a matter of time before AI catches up and can write entire articles, let alone second mentions, to the same standard as humans, but until then, rest assured that all the examples we have used have been written by real people.
Second mentions can be found everywhere, and while we’ve been searching for them for more than ten years, we have to thank our followers for helping us with our quest. Every day, we are sent examples spotted by journalists, who sometimes claim responsibility for their own, or by other readers who enjoy the simple pleasure of happening upon them while reading the news. Often, only a link is given to the article, leaving us xviwith the same thrill of finding the second mention as if we had discovered it ourselves. They are always entertaining and can often be educational by introducing us to words and phrases that we have never heard before.
Though predominantly from the UK and other English-speaking countries, our fans share second mentions from all over the world. Some journalists are proud to appear on our Second Mentions account, while others speak of their fear of being featured inadvertently. Often writers contact us when they are stuck on a particular word and in need of creative inspiration, and our followers are always quick to step in with suggestions. Sometimes these will make it to print, and sometimes it is simply a chance to workshop ideas with fellow writers. For our followers and many readers, second mentions can provide a little light relief amid increasingly distressing news reports from around the world, and that’s how we see them, too.
We’re often asked about our favourite second mentions. Some that always raise a smile in the Second Mentions household include ‘the cod digits’ for fish fingers, ‘the famous black-and-white flightless birds’ for penguins, ‘the monochrome mammals’ for pandas and any time a pig is referred to as a ‘porker’. We’ll share more of our favourites in each of the following chapters, some of which we discovered ourselves but others that were sent to us, for which we’re very grateful.
As we seem to have become something of an authority on the subject, given that we’ve been doing this for the past xviidecade, we’re often sent submissions from followers asking, ‘Does this count…?’ as an official second mention. Therefore, we thought it would be useful to share a few of our house rules.
We call ourselves ‘second’ mentions, but we accept third, fourth, fifth and even sixteenth mentions.They can appear in the headline or in the standfirst but are usually found in the main body of an article.We look for creativity beyond ‘traditional’ second mentions, for example, Mars as ‘the Red Planet’.We avoid examples that include repetition of any part of the first mention. For instance, a supermarket meal deal being ‘the sandwich, snack and drink deal’ is excluded for repetition of the word ‘deal’, whereas ‘the popular lunch option’ would qualify.We award bonus points for alliteration, for example, ‘the bubbly beverage’ for champagne or ‘the furry four-legged felines’ for cats.Second mentions are often a simple construction of ‘definite article + adjective + noun’, but we admire longer ones with additional creativity.We aren’t pedantic; in some cases, we include phrases where we deem these to be in the spirit of second mentions, even if they haven’t technically been used in that way.We enjoy real-life examples beyond the media; they don’t have to come from newspapers, magazines, television or radio. xviiiWe appreciate second mentions in languages other than English.We always aim to be sensitive, avoiding second mentions that are likely to cause serious offence.If you are new to Second Mentions, then we hope this book inspires you to discover your own examples in the articles you read from now on (and to share them with us). If you’ve been following us for some time, then sit back and enjoy our top picks from the past ten years. Every day, the submissions that are sent to us have raised a smile, and putting together this book has allowed us to rediscover those moments over and over again.
Food: the elongated yellow fruit and other comestibles
The basic structure of a second mention about food will often be ‘the + adjective + food’. If the journalist is feeling a little more creative, they may decide to use a synonym for the word ‘food’ itself. Alternatives can include any word provided it means something you can eat, with common choices including ‘comestible’, ‘dish’, ‘meal’, ‘delicacy’ and ‘staple’. However, we note there has been a decline in recent years of the use of ‘edible’ for anything that doesn’t involve cannabis.
Of course, some journalists do use the word ‘food’; examples we have spotted include ‘the carby food’ for bread. The Sheffield Star, too, when writing about sandwiches, describes them as ‘the humble but delicious bread-based food’ at second mention. There are some journalists who opt for ‘foodstuff’ instead. The Guardian, when writing about the very same product, refers to sandwiches as ‘the ultimate capitalist foodstuff’ (which, we have to say, left us a little confused as to whether they are humble or not). Other foodstuffs we have spotted include pies as ‘the pastry-enveloped foodstuff’ in Northern Soul and noodles as ‘the rapid foodstuff’ in the FT. We particularly 2enjoyed ‘the breadcrumb-encased, egg-filled foodstuff’ for Scotch eggs in the London Standard.
‘Comestible’ is another popular alternative, with some of our favourites being bagels as ‘the popular breakfast comestible’ (in the same Guardian article we have a bonus second mention: ‘the creamy comestible’ for cream cheese) and Alpen as ‘the surprisingly sugary Swiss-style breakfast comestible’ in The Times. Sandwiches have also been described as ‘the bread-based comestibles’, by the Daily Star. We also enjoyed the use of ‘piggy comestible’ as a second mention for a pork pie in The Times, which prompted journalist Jack Blackburn to post on X: ‘I lay claim to that one. You try finding synonyms for the bloody things’. He could perhaps have taken inspiration from the Telegraph, which opted for the somewhat more elaborate second mention of ‘the iconic meat and hot water crust pastry combo’.
Foods that require some cooking can be described as ‘dishes’ and ‘meals’, often incorporating either the preparation method or some key ingredients into the second mention. Dishes include ‘the deep-fried dish’ for Scotch eggs in the London Standard, ‘the delicious egg dish’ for omelettes in the Mirror and ‘the ancient oaty dish’ for porridge in the Express & Star. We also enjoyed ratatouille as ‘the well-known stewed vegetable dish from Provence’ from Bloomberg. Meanwhile, for meals, we have ‘the super quick meal’ for cheese on toast in The Sun, and ‘the meaty flatbread meal’ for kebabs from Sky News.
Certain foods may be elevated to the status of ‘delicacy’, typically when they are rare, expensive or have a strong association 3with a particular place (or a combination of all three). Thus, caviar becomes ‘the pricey delicacy’ for the New York Times, feta cheese, ‘the crumbly Greek delicacy’ for the FT and Staffordshire oatcakes, ‘the traditional Stokie delicacy’ for the Stoke Sentinel. However, we have noted other somewhat more surprising foods being described as a delicacy including pizza as ‘the cheesy delicacy’, deep-fried Mars bars as ‘the fat-laden delicacy’ and even gherkins from a McDonald’s burger as ‘the preserved delicacy’ in the Worksop Guardian. Though they may not be particularly rare or expensive, these three foods do at least have strong associations with particular places (i.e. Italy, Scotland and, er, McDonald’s), so perhaps it’s not so surprising that they are described as delicacies after all.
At the other end of the scale, if the food is widely found in people’s homes it often becomes a ‘staple’ at second mention. If associated with a particular part of the kitchen, that location might be referred to, for example, ‘the store cupboard staple’ could be for pasta, rice or baked beans. Ketchup, meanwhile, might become ‘the tabletop staple’; butter, ‘the staple fridge item’; fish fingers, ‘the much-loved freezer staple’ and so on. However, if a ‘staple’ is typically only considered a staple by those living in a certain area, this may also be noted in the second mention, for example Henderson’s Relish, which is produced in Sheffield, becomes ‘the northern staple’ for Leeds Live. Yorkshire puddings can also be ‘the northern staple’, and while we can confirm these are very much a staple in the south of England too (at least, they are in our house), haggis (‘the 4Caledonian staple’) and square sausage (‘the traditional Scottish staple’) are unfortunately not.
When selecting adjectives for the second mention, journalists often focus on what the food looks like. They may reference a distinctive colour, ranging from the straightforward – custard as ‘the yellow stuff’, pistachios as ‘the little green nuts’ and sugar as ‘the white commodity’ – to the more elaborate, such as Battenberg as ‘the garish pink and yellow cake’ in The Times and borscht as ‘the beloved, magenta-coloured soup’ in the Wall Street Journal. Sticking with a pink theme, we also enjoyed salmon as ‘the pink-fleshed fish’ from the FT and various other publications, which is perhaps a wiser choice than ‘the pink-fleshed crowd pleaser’ as used by The Guardian, due to potential for confusion with that other notable pink-fleshed crowd pleaser, Mr Blobby.
If the colour of the food is not particularly distinctive, it might fall into the category of ‘the beige food’. This term can be applied to any number of different foods that are predominantly light brown in colour including chips, chicken nuggets and fish fingers. The adjective ‘beige’ often comes with the implication that the food itself will taste fairly bland. Kudos to The Guardian for its attempt to make fish and chips sound much more elevated by describing the dish as ‘the golden food’ at second mention. However, there is one food that has earned itself iconic status despite, or perhaps because of, its colour: the Cornish pasty becomes ‘the beige icon’ for the Metro.
The size of a food item is not typically noted in a second 5mention, though journalists make an exception if it is a surprisingly large specimen. On slow news days, particularly in the tabloid newspapers, you will often see articles about massive comestibles. Let’s face it: is there anyone out there who doesn’t love a story about a colossal crisp or an extra-chunky chip? These stories will generally be accompanied by a picture of the lucky finder clutching the item and wearing a stunned expression, with the sense of scale provided by their hand or perhaps alongside a ‘normal-sized’ version of the foodstuff, or sometimes a ruler or tape measure.
Our favourites include a whopping Walkers roast chicken crisp, or ‘the colossal carb’ for Nottinghamshire Live, a dazzlingly sized Frazzle, or ‘the super-sized corn-crisp’ for MailOnline and a hulking Hula Hoop, or ‘the super-sized tubular treat’ for The Sun. Further highlights include ‘the banana-shaped behemoth’ for another Hula Hoop also in The Sun and ‘the six-inch ridged wonder’ for a Morrisons sweet chilli crisp in the Mirror. We’re not sure how the journalists managed to slip those suggestions past the sub-editors.
Other second mentions for substantially sized snacks that we have spotted include giant chips: for a McCain oven chip, ‘the prodigious potato’, and for a Waitrose crinkle cut chip, ‘the supersized starchy surprise’, both from the Metro. Brobdingnagian bran flakes have made the newspapers too, featuring as ‘the high-fibre mega-shard’ in the Scottish Sun and ‘the fibrous badboy’ in The Sun.
A food’s (normal-sized) standard shape may instead be the 6focus of the second mention, for example, falafel become ‘the deep-fried chickpea balls’ for i24NEWS and burrata, ‘the spherical cheese’ for The Times. Eggs are, fairly obviously, ‘the oval-shaped favourite’ for The Register or ‘the handy oval-shaped food’ for Kent Online; however, when it comes to haggis, there is some debate over whether it should be spherical (‘the offal-rich orb’), or elliptical (‘the ovoid, offal-stuffed dinner’). We’ll leave judgement of ‘the Caledonian staple’ to others.
Moving on to three-sided food, samosas are ‘the tasty triangular snacks’ for Leicestershire Live and ‘the carby triangular dough pocket’ for Eater Atlanta. Other notable examples of ‘the triangular food’ include Toblerone (‘the triangular-shaped almond-and-honey-laced chocolate bar’ from The Guardian), Doritos (‘the triangular snack’ from Forecourt Trader) and, of course, sandwiches when they are cut in the best way. There is, however, some confusion over whether pizza counts in the same category, becoming ‘the triangular food’ for The Sun but ‘the delicious dough discs’ for Cornwall Live.
Chips can be ‘the potato sticks’, while crisps might be ‘the potato discs’ or similar. Other savoury snacks include Nik Naks or ‘the oddly shaped extruded corn crisps’ for Viz, while the Metro neatly manages to avoid repetition in the second mention for Twiglets with ‘the stick-shaped savouries’.
However, our favourite shape-based second mentions are for those with a slightly more unusual form. We have sugar, aka ‘the hated white granules’ in the Telegraph, Cumberland sausages are ‘the curly pork delight’, croissants are ‘the iconic 7flaky crescents’ in The Independent, and for shrimp, marvellously, we have ‘the tiny seafood commas’ from restaurant critic Jay Rayner in The Observer.
The distinctive texture of some foods makes for a good second mention, for example bao buns are ‘the fluffy food item’, marshmallows, ‘the magic vanilla cushions’ and candy floss, ‘the iconic pink clouds’. Maple syrup becomes ‘the golden goo’, while soup, presumably made from popular orange vegetables, becomes ‘the gloopy orange liquid’. Meanwhile poutine, the French-Canadian delicacy of chips, cheese curds and gravy, becomes ‘the mushy medley’ for The Guardian.
At the more masticable end of the scale we have liquorice, which becomes ‘the black chewy substance’ in The Guardian, and flapjacks, or ‘the chewy, oat-y, sticky blocks’ in the FT. Cereal becomes ‘the inexpensive crunchy food’ in the Express and croissants are ‘the flaky French fancies’ for The Sun.
In terms of sheer variety, cheese is the real stand-out in this texture category, ranging from ‘the milky cheese’ (mozzarella) to ‘the quivering dairy product’ (burrata) to ‘the crumbly white cheese’ (feta). However, above all the others, there is one variety guaranteed to make sub-editors really cheesed off: halloumi. Here’s a selection of some of our favourite examples:
‘The much-loved squeaky cheese’‘The firm, squeaky Cypriot cheese’‘The rubbery cheese’‘The unmelting cheese’ 8‘The versatile squeaky cheese’‘The famously textured dairy product’For meat, seafood and dairy products, the focus of the second mention will tend be on how the food has been made or where it has come from. Thus, mortadella is ‘the silky, peppery meat’ for The Times and kebabs are ‘the chilli-soaked rotisserie meat’ for the Manchester Evening News. Spam, or ‘the bright pink wartime favourite’ in Waitrose Food, meanwhile, can be ‘the iconic meaty mash’ for Atlas Obscura, or the ‘salty canned meat’ in The i.
It can be harder to provide unique elegant variation for dairy products as they all tend to be soft, white and creamy. Thus, cheese is often ‘the popular dairy product’ and cottage cheese, ‘the soft, white dairy product’, though we appreciated the efforts of the FT, with ‘the creamy-fermented dairy product’ for yogurt. Luckily, descriptions for eggs are much clearer, and we received some cracking suggestions on X: ‘the white ovoids’, ‘the nourishment in shells’, ‘the delicious chicken-lain products’ and ‘the omelette necessities’. We also enjoyed ‘the hard-shelled reproductive body produced by the domesticated junglefowl’ as a second mention from the FT, though none of these can compete with, wait for it, ‘the hen fruit’ from TipRanks.
Moving onto seafood, we so enjoyed ‘the cod digits’ for fish fingers on MailOnline that we invited our followers on X to suggest further examples and they certainly came up with 9the goods. Our favourites were ‘the oceanic oblong’, ‘the be-crumbed piscine cuboid’, ‘the flaky cod appendage’, ‘the piscatorial phalanx’ and, behold, ‘Neptune’s crispy pointer’.
While we love these examples, sometimes journalists’ choice of descriptors can make the food itself seem a little unpalatable. We struggle to understand why someone might want to eat jellied eels at the best of times, and the Mirror only served to confirm our judgement in selecting ‘the slithery dish’ as a second mention. We had a similar reaction when The Times referred to lobster mousse as ‘the blended crustacean’ and the Sydney Morning Herald described oysters as ‘the briny bivalves’. Yorkshire pudding, an obviously delightful and delicious dish, also sounds much less appetising when described as ‘the floury, eggy mixture’.
Take sausages, too, a beloved comfort food that pairs well with mashed potato and gravy – delicious, right? However, when, as in The Times, they are referred to as ‘the emulsified high-fat offal tubes’ on second mention, it makes them somewhat less appetising. Of course, there’s an element of hypocrisy: we know what goes into making these products and would happily eat them if put on a plate in front of us, but when black pudding becomes ‘the cylinder of blood and suet’ for BBC News, haggis becomes ‘the infamous sheep’s organ pudding’ for Atlas Obscura and Spam becomes ‘the mysterious meat product’ for MailOnline, it’s enough to make anyone consider becoming a vegetarian.
Other foods are associated with a particular country or 10region, usually where it was originally made. Thus from Italy we have pizza or ‘the Neapolitan nourishment’ and cannoli or ‘the perennial Sicilian favourite confection’, both second mentions from The Guardian, and from Spain, chorizo becomes ‘the spicy Spanish sausage’ for CNN. Hummus, meanwhile, becomes ‘the Middle Eastern paste’ for the FT.
However, our favourite second mention for the origin of food – and perhaps the longest one ever – comes from Lucy Mangan in The Guardian. Here, we have chocolate or ‘the combination of fat, sugar and cacao that humanity has been progressively fattening and sugaring since the Mayans started experimenting with the bitter seeds of the local trees and thought: “Hey, we could be on to something. Let’s tell the rest of Mesoamerica!”’ We hope one day it might end up in the book of Guinness World Records, aka ‘the beer-financed superlative almanac’ for the Irish Times.
Some foods are a rich source of a particular nutrient, which can be a veritable mine for second mentions. Bananas, known for their high sugar levels, become ‘the energy-rich yellow fruit’ for MailOnline and ‘the fruity pick-me-up’ for The Times, or alternatively ‘the plump pouch of potassium’ for Bayer. Oranges predictably become ‘the vitamin C-rich fruit’ as they are packed with ‘the scurvy-fighting substance’.
Eggs appear as ‘the high-protein, versatile food’ in The Guardian and ‘the protein-packed favourite’ for The Sun. Other foods in this category include lentils, or ‘the tiny protein packed powerhouses’ for the Washington Post, and falafel, or 11‘the crispy balls of fried plant protein’ for The Sun. Somewhat more surprisingly, tarantulas – apparently a regional delicacy in Cambodia – are ‘the protein-packed arachnids’ for the South China Morning Post, which makes them sound far healthier than ‘the crunchy arachnid’ on MailOnline.
Other foods are referred to by the impact they have when consumed, for better or worse. Mapo tofu for example, a popular spicy dish from China’s Sichuan province, is dubbed ‘the slithery brow-wiper’ in the New York Times thanks to its key ingredient, Sichuan peppercorns, which themselves become ‘the tiny, mouth-numbing flavour grenades’ for Bon Appetit.
Baked beans, meanwhile, are often ‘the parp-inducing favourite’, though the same could equally apply to a number of other pulses, legumes and cruciferous vegetables. Alpen makes another appearance, this time as ‘the colonic cleansing breakfast dust’ for comedian Stewart Lee in The Guardian, while square sausage becomes, in the Scottish Sun, ‘the adored right-angled gut-buster’ and ‘the tummy-filling lip smacker’.
Some foods are traditionally eaten at certain times (such as a full English breakfast), on particular days (Sunday lunch, anyone?) or in specific places (barbecues, picnics or the seaside). Second mentions make use of all of these features.
For the first meal of the day, many people tuck into a healthy bowl of porridge or ‘the hot traditional breakfast’ or perhaps some cereal, typically ‘the breakfast flakes’ or similar. From time to time, you might opt for a bacon roll or ‘the breakfast treat’, perhaps some crumpets or ‘the absorbent British 12breakfast treats’ for The Sun, or even some kippers or ‘the fishy breakfast treat’ for MailOnline. Others will go for a full English breakfast, aka ‘the calorific mainstay of traditional British cafes’ for eNCA, which of course would not be complete without eggs or ‘the popular breakfast mainstay’, baked beans or ‘the juicy breakfast staple’ and black pudding or ‘the frozen breakfast staple’.
In the middle of the day, sandwiches are a classic go-to, becoming ‘the quintessential lunchtime snack’ or, for Politico, ‘the bread-based convenience food’. Various fillings have been described as ‘the sandwich staple’ on second mention, ranging from cheese and ham to bacon, lettuce and tomato, though our favourite is for mortadella, or ‘the flamingo-coloured lunch meat’ in the FT. Finally, one for our friends across the Pond, we have peanut butter as ‘Americans’ favorite legume-based sandwich ingredient’ in The Conversation (which did make us wonder what the other contenders for the title might have been).
Later in the day, there remains a north/south divide between those who consider ‘tea’ to be when you would eat the main evening meal and those who deem it a mid-afternoon cup of tea and a piece of cake, as evidenced by the choice of second mentions. For the former camp, ‘the teatime treat’ could mean fish fingers, chips or sausages, while for the latter, it could be crumpets, a scone or a Chelsea bun. Is there any way we can have both? 13
‘The barbecue favourite’ can refer to any number of foods, such as burgers and sausages, or sweetcorn and halloumi; similarly, ‘the picnic favourite’ covers Scotch eggs, pork pies, quiche or potato salad. Meanwhile, ‘the seaside favourite’ could be used as an alternative to fish and chips, a stick of rock or an ice cream (as well as, of course, to David Hasselhoff from his Baywatch years).
Later on in the evening, you might encounter ‘the post-pub favourite’ which almost universally refers to kebabs, though for the Irish Mirror, it refers to a spice bag (and if you haven’t had one of these, we suggest you take a trip to Dublin).
Some foods are served in the same way whenever or wherever they are consumed. This could be in the form of a traditional topping, for example parmesan becomes ‘the world-famous pasta topping’ for the Wall Street Journal and Cadbury’s Flake 99s are ‘the iconic ice cream cone toppers’ for the Irish Independent. Incidentally, a national shortage of ‘the crumbly chocolate sticks’ in 2022 led in part to the price of a 99 ice cream reaching £5, prompting The Sun to describe it as ‘the costly cone’ at second mention.
In other situations, the way a food is consumed takes centre stage, for example McVitie’s Digestive biscuits can become ‘the iconic dunker’, though others may prefer to use the same second mention for ginger nuts, bourbons or custard creams (we also wouldn’t rule out using it for the basketball legend Michael Jordan). 14
SNACKS AND TREATS
Everyone has a favourite snack; for us, it’s a packet of Doritos, aka ‘the triangular corn snacks’ in the Daily Mail. For others it might be some crackers (‘the simple snack’) or perhaps some popcorn (‘the silver-screen snack’). You might fancy something a little meatier, such as a packet of pork scratchings or ‘the porcine snack’ for the Hull Daily Mail, or even a Scotch egg or ‘the stout British bar snack’ in the FT. If you are feeling a little more peckish, then help yourself to some delicious garlic bread or, according to Courier Mail, ‘the carb-heavy entree’ or perhaps a Pot Noodle, which are ‘the budget-friendly dehydrated snacks’ in The Sun.
But that’s where we draw the line and bring out the dictionary, flick to the letter ‘S’, and look up the definition of the word ‘snack’. Typically, it refers to a small amount of food eaten between meals, which for us means something to tide you over until the next official mealtime, or basically anything you’d find in the crisp aisle in the supermarket. Other foods we have – more controversially – seen described as ‘snacks’ on second mention include chips or ‘the fried spud snack’ in The Sun, tater tots or ‘the cylindrical spud snack’ in the Willamette Week and chicken nuggets or ‘the breaded snack’ in the London Standard. Fair enough if you have time to rustle up these foods as snacks, but we are intrigued to know who is regularly snacking on oysters, which become ‘the slimy sea snack’ in The Sun, or indeed jellied eels, ‘the East End snack’ for The Times. 15
Treats, like snacks, are consumed outside the standard mealtimes, though journalists’ use of this term feels a little more appropriate. Second mentions for savoury treats that we’ve spotted include ‘the chickpea treat’ for hummus, ‘the carby treat’ for garlic bread and ‘the fried grated potato treats’ for hash browns. We also enjoyed ‘the thrice-baked treats’ for Dorset knobs (a type of biscuit) from BBC News. Other treats that sound a little less appetising, and therefore a little less like ‘treats’, include ‘the dusty treat’ for Cheetos on The Drum and ‘the squeaky red treats’ for saveloy sausages on HertsLive.
For sweet treats, we’ve found ‘the colourful chocolate treat’ for M&M’s and ‘the crumbly chocolate treat’ for a Cadbury Flake. Reference to how the treat has been made is also common, for example ‘the popular baked treat’ for scones, ‘the microwaveable treat’ for popcorn and ‘the frozen treat’ for ice cream. Our favourite treat-based second mention is for jelly or ‘the wibbly-wobbly treat’ in the Mail on Sunday.
