Welcome to one of the few longer weekends Americans have in the year – Thanksgiving, which is a public holiday on the fourth Thursday in November. Most Americans take the Friday off and travel home to celebrate with the family.
Thanksgiving is originally when Americans gave thanks to god for the harvest & health. Today there is a huge feast usually with a roasted Turkey with all the trimmings, and desserts galore.
My fave YouTuber Wheezy Waiter even produced a video with 12 ways to be healthy on Thanksgiving (without being miserable) (see vid of the week). Inspired by his not so serious (as always) recommendations I thought we could look into some of the many English words about eating as food for thought (sorry couldn’t resist).
Before a meal, we are usually very hungry aka ‘starving’, ‘famished’ or ‘ravenous’ and my take on the common phrase “I could eat a horse.” is “I’m so hungry I could eat a horse, pig, cow and 3 chickens for dessert”.
So we dig into and devour (eat v quickly cos v. hungry) the starter taking care not to fill up on it.
Next we pile up the plate with the main dish and wolf (= to eat v. quickly, by putting a lot in one’s mouth at once), it all down. Chewing is for wusses!!
Then tuck into seconds, which we scoff (= to eat a lot of sth quickly), while eyeing up the desserts, just sitting there waiting to be gobbled (= to eat sth v. fast in a way that people consider rude/greedy).
As our eyes are mostly bigger than our stomachs we end up feeling stuffed (too full to eat anymore) and unable to bend over to tie our shoes before we leave.
Not to worry, we stay instead cos there are always the leftovers when we are feeling peckish (getting hungry) again.
Bon appétit.
harvest (Ernte), roast Turkey (Putenbraten), with all the trimmings (mit allem Drum und Dran), dessert (Nachtisch), galore (im Überfluss), to dig into (a meal) (sich auf etw stürzen), starter (Vorspiese), to fill up on sth (sich mit etw den Bauch vollschlagen), to pile up (aufstapeln), to chew (kauen), wuss (Weichei), to tuck into sth (sich etw schmecken lassen), seconds (Nachschlag), to eye sth up (etw interessiert in Augenschein nehmen), to bend over (sich bücken), to tie one’s shoes (sich die Schuhe binden), leftovers (Überreste)