{"id":12340,"date":"2008-11-17T08:30:49","date_gmt":"2008-11-17T08:30:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.wordswarm.net\/dictionary\/spitchcock.html"},"modified":"2008-11-17T08:30:49","modified_gmt":"2008-11-17T08:30:49","slug":"spitchcock","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/2008\/11\/17\/spitchcock.html","title":{"rendered":"Spitchcock"},"content":{"rendered":"

To split an eel lengthwise and broil it.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Once I was with a friend who, to my confusion, kept repeating the word “eel.” I started saying it too because eel is, I guessed, an amusing word when repeated many times over. My friend’s insistant repetition of the word, however, confused me. It still does, because evidently we shared a joke at some point which included repeateded use of the word “eel.” <\/p>\n

I remembered talk of eel soup, of eel milk shakes, of a cornish hen stuffed with eel. <\/p>\n

I did not remember the fixation on the humorous pronunciation of the word. <\/p>\n

The eel conversation happened in a car, en route from Boston to New York. We simply added any food or culinary presentation we could think of to the word “eel.” When eel soup was suggested  I looked out the window and saw a river below us. We were on a stretch of Interstate that passed over a river or a lake, and I remember thinking that this body of water might have eel in it. I tried to think of ways to incorporate this lake full of eel into the riff of our conversation.<\/p>\n

But the fixation on the funny pronunciation got away from me, and I would not know about it now except my friend said “Don’t you remember?” Then she reminded me of the eel soup, milk shakes, and cornish hen — these things I do remember. But not the funny way we pronounced it. I wish I remembered that.<\/p>\n

Eeeeeeeel.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To split an eel lengthwise and broil it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[36],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12340","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-whats-the-word","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paumAn-3d2","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12340","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12340"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12340\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12340"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12340"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12340"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}