[Grammar] We write cheesecake, but chocolate cake. Why?

[TomUK]

In a German cookery forum somebody asked why in English we write 'cheesecake' as one word, but 'chocolate cake' as two words. I thought it's a piece of cake. I just look it up in one of my dictionaries and Bob's your uncle. But after reading the entries in three different dictionaries I felt I had bitten off more than I could chew.

So I consulted Michael Swan's 'Practical English Usage' and Raymond Murphy's 'English Grammar in Use' and from what I read and understood about 'noun + noun' the answer to the question seems to be: 'That's the way the cookie crumbles'.

What do you English teachers think? Am I a smart cookie or is this post just taking the biscuit?

TomUK

 

[Raymott]

In a German cookery forum somebody asked why in English we write 'cheesecake' as one word, but 'chocolate cake' as two words. I thought it's a piece of cake. I just look it up in one of my dictionaries and Bob's your uncle.
You can't use "Bob's your uncle" like this. The context requires you to say, "I thought I could just look it up in a dictionary, and Bob would be my uncle." But this is not idiomatic.

But after reading the entries in three different dictionaries I felt I had bitten off more than I could chew.
Then Bob can't be your uncle yet. ;-)

So I consulted Michael Swan's 'Practical English Usage' and Raymond Murphy's 'English Grammar in Use' and from what I read and understood about 'noun + noun' the answer to the question seems to be: 'That's the way the cookie crumbles'.

What do you English teachers think? Am I a smart cookie or is this post just taking the biscuit?

TomUK

I assume you'd give quite a bit of dough to know the answer. But I don't want to appear to be pudding forward half-baked answers.

 

[Hedwig]

I think I'm ready to cook supper after these posts. Not the healthy salad Id' planned, though.

 

[TheParser]

In a German cookery forum somebody asked why in English we write 'cheesecake' as one word, but 'chocolate cake' as two words. I thought it's a piece of cake. I just look it up in one of my dictionaries and Bob's your uncle. But after reading the entries in three different dictionaries I felt I had bitten off more than I could chew.

So I consulted Michael Swan's 'Practical English Usage' and Raymond Murphy's 'English Grammar in Use' and from what I read and understood about 'noun + noun' the answer to the question seems to be: 'That's the way the cookie crumbles'.

What do you English teachers think? Am I a smart cookie or is this post just taking the biscuit?

TomUK

***** NOT A TEACHER *****


(1) Your post and the replies were very humorous and entertaining. Thank you.

(2) After checking my dictionaries and the Web, I think that the term in question

has gone through the same process that has affected many other words:

(a) First, it was indeed spelled cheese cake.

(b) Then it became cheese-cake.

(c) Finally, cheesecake.

 

[konungursvia]

Even if an authority dared to make a rule, he would be overstepping his authority. The real reasons are normative, i.e. what the community is used to, so distilling it into a principle would be rather false.

Perhaps cheesecloth existed for long enough to make cheesecake look right. Whereas chocolate teapot and chocolate egg and chocolate bunny indicated otherwise.

 

[BobK]

... the term in question

has gone through the same process that has affected many other words:

(a) First, it was indeed spelled cheese cake.

(b) Then it became cheese-cake.

(c) Finally, cheesecake.

For this reason, I used to keep several generations of the same dictionary (much to the distress of MrsK). My favourite example is the female blackbird (which is not a black bird; it is brown).

b

 

[Tdol]

Could it be that there are many different types of chocolate cake, but cheesecake is somehow more homogeneous?

 

[Barb_D]

All I can really say is, I need to find my recipe for chocolate cheesecake. It had diabetics 100 yards away dropping into comas, but it sure was good. One secret was to put Keebler Elves (chocolate sandwhich cookies with chocolate cream filling) into a food processor to form crumbs used to make the crust.

 

[SoothingDave]

I think if you spell it without a space, cheesecake has fewer calories.

 

[BobK]

All I can really say is, I need to find my recipe for chocolate cheesecake. It had diabetics 100 yards away dropping into comas, but it sure was good. One secret was to put Keebler Elves (chocolate sandwhich cookies with chocolate cream filling) into a food processor to form crumbs used to make the crust.

The Br English translation would be Bourbon biscuits (pronounced like the dynasty not the drink). Sounds good ;-)

b

 

[Hedwig]

For this reason, I used to keep several generations of the same dictionary (much to the distress of MrsK). My favourite example is the female blackbird (which is not a black bird; it is brown).

b

Much to my disappointment. I've always thought blackbirds were black birds. At least the male is, isn't it?

Luckily, I made myself some tea and biscuits before sitting at the computer today, or I couldn't have read through this thread.

 

[5jj]

Much to my disappointment. I've always thought blackbirds were black birds. At least the male is, isn't it?

Luckily, I made myself some tea and biscuits before sitting at the computer today, or I couldn't have read through this thread.

I survived by sitting in my (transparent glass) greenhouse checking the bulb-planting dates I'd noted on my (green) blackboard.

 

[BobK]

Much to my disappointment. I've always thought blackbirds were black birds. At least the male is, isn't it?

...

:up: The cock's black, the hen's brown.

b

 

[TomUK]

What have I started? I was away from my computer for two days and my cheesecake has turned into a blackbird. Even I could not make such a cock-up with a cake recipe.

But coming back to a serious grammar question: From the above answers I gather that the word 'cheesecake' is written like this because of gradual language developments. It is not written as a single noun because of a particular grammar rule.

TomUK

 

[emsr2d2]

What have I started? I was away from my computer for two days and my cheesecake has turned into a blackbird. Even I could not make such a cock-up with a cake recipe.

But coming back to a serious grammar question: From the above answers I gather that the word 'cheesecake' is written like this because of gradual language developments. It is not written as a single noun because of a particular grammar rule.

TomUK

I would say that you've hit the nail squarely on the head there.

 

[Hedwig]

I think freelance has gone through the same stages, right? I mean from two words, to a hyphenated compound, to one word.

 

[BobK]

I think freelance has gone through the same stages, right? I mean from two words, to a hyphenated compound, to one word.

Yup :up: - you may remember that The Parser referred earlier to a 'process that has affected many other words' - thousands, I would guess. More-or-less ('More or less') any compound word - especially nouns - started life as separate words, later hyphenated.

And not just in English. The French for 'today' started life as au jour de hui, where hui was derived from the Latin hodie (which, in earlier Latin, had been hoc die [='on/at this day']). Words just tend to gang up together - if you want a $10 word it's 'agglutination'. ;-)

b

PS Modern French politicians, using a cliché not unlike our 'in this day and age', sometimes say 'au jour d'aujourd'hui', which, if you take it back far enough, means 'at the day of at the day of at this day' ;-)

 

[konungursvia]

What have I started? I was away from my computer for two days and my cheesecake has turned into a blackbird. Even I could not make such a cock-up with a cake recipe.

But coming back to a serious grammar question: From the above answers I gather that the word 'cheesecake' is written like this because of gradual language developments. It is not written as a single noun because of a particular grammar rule.

TomUK

But spelling is just an arbitrary convention. If your instincts tell you we speak compound nouns as single utterances, as in Germanic languages, you are correct (particularly in AmE).

 

[Hedwig]

The French for 'today' started life as au jour de hui,

This reminds me of the fact that not so long ago, some 45 years, I spelt to-day. ESL books still had it like that. Or the old-fashioned books we used back then.

 

[TheParser]

This reminds me of the fact that not so long ago, some 45 years, I spelt to-day. ESL books still had it like that. Or the old-fashioned books we used back then.

***** NOT A TEACHER *****


yester-day

to-morrow