Thursday, July 24, 2008
Quote of the Moment
"They're selling like hotcakes. . . what does that even mean? Do hotcakes sell out? And who calls them hotcakes anymore anyways? What are hotcakes? Are they pancakes? Why don't we ever say they're selling like pancakes? But pancakes don't sell out either. Although McDonald's stops selling them at, like, 10:30 a.m."
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3 comments:
I like to think it just means cakes that are hot out of the oven. Don't you just love cakes that are hot out of the oven?
I decided to look it up. Here is the explanatioin from a site called The Phrase Finder:
SELL LIKE HOT CAKES - "Hot cakes cooked in bear grease or pork lard were popular from earliest times in American. First made of cornmeal, the griddle cakes or pancakes were of course best when served piping hot and were often sold at church benefits, fairs, and other functions. So popular were they that by the beginning of the 19th century 'to sell like hot cakes' was a familiar expression for anything that sold very quickly effortlessly, and in quantity." From "Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins" by Robert Hendrickson (Facts on File, New York, 1997)
Ahhh jeeez....suzy q stole my thunder. I was all prepared to tell you how it originated back in the 1800's. That the original saying was actually "Sailing like hot cakes" and stemmed from those settlers (hardy folk...but poor)who would grill pancakes over the fire and sometimes burn them. The hotcakes that were burned particularly crispy (thus rendering them inedible) would be used as frisbees by the Settler's children because they were too poor to own store bought toys.
But I think Suzy q's story rings more true :)
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