bronkic 2 days ago

"Oatmeal" is a very confusing word to me because it's not actually "meal" (meaning "flour" in this case). There is actually a flour made out of oats, but it's not what you would make porridge out of.

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  • amenhotep 2 days ago

    Flour as you know it is not quite the same thing as meal milled at the time when the words were being invented. Wheatmeal is still a thing, look up images of it and the resemblance to oatmeal should be a lot more apparent!

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    • jimnotgym 2 days ago

      I would class porridge oats as what might be called 'rolled oats' if you were buying animal feed. They are not ground, but crushed under a rolling stone. I guess they have different terms for different markets. Never seen rolled wheat, but I have seen rolled barley and oats.. they looks like porridge oats. Or is it an Atlantic divide, but with the US foodie term crossing back in the food market

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    • adrian_b 2 days ago

      Originally, "meal" was the generic word for milled grains.

      Already the Mycenaean Greeks, 3500 years ago, used a cognate word with the same meaning: "meleuro-".

      "Flour", which comes from "flower", originally meant the finest grade of meal, which was considered the best.

      Nowadays the usage of these words is not always consistent with their original meanings.

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  • actionfromafar 2 days ago

    But it's often the first meal of the day. :)

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    • jfyi 2 days ago

      Bravo.

      It's not often I find myself quoting Gwar, but this reminds me of "Bone meal! Better than no meal at all!"

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kube-system 2 days ago

Oat porridge (aka oatmeal, aka oatmeal porridge) is one type of porridge.

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  • jimnotgym 2 days ago

    I suppose I should acknowledge there is a big world out there. If I asked for porridge in the UK I would get oat porridge. The product I bought this morning to make it was called 'porridge oats'.I suspect the Asian version comes from the age of empire with British troops applying their home terms to their rations? 'This gloopy river thing looks like Porridge'.

    A porridge made of rice in the UK is not a thing as far as I am aware (I'm not in hipster London though), I suspect it would be what we call Rice Pudding?

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    • lonelyasacloud 2 days ago

      > A porridge made of rice in the UK is not a thing.

      No, for that we've adopted the name "rice pudding"

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