this post was submitted on 12 Jul 2024
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Showerthoughts

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A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The best ones are thoughts that many people can relate to and they find something funny or interesting in regular stuff.

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Here are 3 examples:
Fried egg, fried rice, fried chicken

All these "fry" are different. If you were to use the "fry" in fried rice to fry an egg, you'd get scrambled egg. Fried chicken is done by submerging it in oil, which you won't do with fried egg or fried rice.

This post is made from the perspective of a Cantonese/Chinese speaker. We have different words for these different types of "fry" (煎, 炒, 炸 respectively)

(Turns out I did post it in the wrong sub and I didn't realize, and now I feel very stupid. Photon UI has once again screwed me over. Got mad for no reason.)

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago

English cooking vocabulary matches the sofistication of their cuisine

[–] [email protected] 12 points 3 months ago

I think y'all are missing the point. OP points out that in their native language, Cantonese, they have different words for each of these kinds of cooking. In English, we apply modifiers, if anything; "deep fry", "air fry", but we don't have different words for the different types of frying.

That's all they're saying. Eskimo words for snow. Oregonian words for rain. Georgian words for "you're an idiot." Apparently, in Cantonese, they have a lot of different words for different types of frying.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago

Nope, nothing ambiguous to me.

To fry means to cook in a fat. That is all.

That's like saying "blue" is ambiguous simply because there's also 13 different Pantone blues.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Scrambled egg is still fried egg

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago

You can make scrambled egg without any oil or butter if you have a really good non-stick pan.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 3 months ago

Frying is basically conveying heat to the food via oil

[–] [email protected] 19 points 3 months ago

No, it isn’t.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 3 months ago (1 children)

You forgot the small fry that will be vader someday later.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago (1 children)

.. which is a term based on the word for small fish.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 3 months ago

Sometimes after an aggressive cannabis consuming session I myself even become fried.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 months ago

Never mind the small fry. The word "put" has enough different meanings to fry your CPU.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Wait until you run into the other usages of the word!

But frying food is just using direct heat and oil to cook, regardless of the depth of the oil. And, you'd be surprised how deep the oil is when some people fry eggs or rice. It isn't too unusual for eggs to have enough oil that they more or less float on top of it, though that isn't done for scrambled eggs.

The word fry is also used to mean baby fish, electronics being damaged by surges or excess voltage/amperage, and sometimes even to indicate that someone is inebriated via drugs other than alcohol. Plus there's irregular uses of the word.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 3 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 months ago

Even worse, trailing off vocal fryyyyy.y.y..y.y.y..

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 months ago

And the most common use of the fish version is to describe a person or animal as a "small fry" when comparing them to another similar group.

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