The Twinky in My Eye
Driving to NYC yesterday, I saw a truck marked "Wonder Bread" and "Hostess Cakes" — and I realized for the first time in my life (56 years!) that Hostess Cupcakes and Hostess Twinkies are related to the word "hostess."
By gosh.
The Hostess brand is a name I learned so early in life that my brain locked in on it and never unlocked to make the association. I bet other people have words and phrases like that — there's there's probably a word for the phenomenon, too. If you have something to share about it, please write.
posted by Jewish Currents at 2:56 PM
3 Comments:
I'm not sure what you mean. It sounds like you viewed "Hostess" and "hostess" as homograph---words that are spelled the same but have unrelated meanings.
Hmm... Is Twinky the singular of Twinkies, or is it Twinkie?
Seriously though...
I think most of us fifty-something boomers have the same sort of unconscious association of Kleenex with Tissues. How many times have you heard someone ask for a Kleenex, when they really mean a tissue? (For the female boomers, there's also Kotex, which became the noun used instead of "sanitary pad" - which, come to think of it, is a pretty bizarre name to begin with... but let's not go there.)
As for Hostess Twinkies... in my house, we preferred Ring Dings. Now that you have me started thinking about snack foods... who thought up these names, anyway? Twinkies. Ring Dings. Ding Dongs. Ho-Hos. What were these people smoking???
Until I saw the real thing unsliced on a plate in the kitchen, I never realized that the dish "tongue" was a -- yuck! -- tongue.
x Judith
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