Linguistic economics

[resonant]

I heard someone say, "I'll bet dollars to donuts," just now.

Don't donuts cost more than a dollar these days?

Comments

[octette]

Two for a dollar around these parts :)

[resonant]

Been a long time since I bought a donut. They don't like me any more.

[kinetikatrue]

Boutique donuts may be expensive, but grocery store ones are still 2 or 3 to the dollar, in my experience. Not that I spend much time eating either these days.

[resonant]

I used to be able to eat donuts, but they give me Donut Stomach now; if I have one at coffee break time, I won't want either lunch or dinner.

[kinetikatrue]

Whereas I've gone off wheat, almost entirely, and nothing else is quite the same. They were my favorites as a kid, though - along with coffeecake, once I understood that it wasn't actually MADE with coffee. *g*

[resonant]

I would totally eat a coffee-flavored coffee cake.

[kinetikatrue]

I probably would too, these days, but bb!me DEFINITELY wasn't interested.* Coffee smelled bad, so the idea of inflicting it upon a poor, defenseless cake...the horror!

*The amusing thing about this is that I wasn't anything like a picky eater - I LIKED liver and happily ate broccoli and spinach and cabbage and so on. In fact, the only foods I regularly found less than pleasing involved milk chocolate.

...aaaand editing this in here because I just remembered: my favorite cheapish lunch in my first couple years of college was a can of Mr. Pibb, a toasted everything bagel with veggie cream cheese and a pair of peanut butter cream filled donuts from the grocery next to the bagel shop. Almost completely terrible for me, but delicious!

[brynwulf]

I would eat a coffee-flavored doughnut.

[metaphortunate]

Is that bad? Seems like a bargain!

[delphi]

$1.01 at my regional chain, which until they phased out the penny drove me crazy. (I think it came out to a rounder number if you had a coffee with it, but still.)

[resonant]

I'm surprised, looking at the comments here, how much regional variation there seems to be.

[marycontrary]

I think the phrase comes from empty circles, more literally a bet versus no collateral from the other side. Still, there's potential for confusion. Maybe we should go to diamonds to doughnuts?

[resonant]

The first reference I found was at randomhouse.com: . Being willing to bet dollars against doughnuts (viewed as worthless) means that you're totally confident that you're right, so confident that you'll bet money against nothing.

[twistedchick]

I think the saying dates from when donuts were a nickel.

[resonant]

I also remember that in "Ethan Frome" the people ate a lot of donuts, suggesting that they were cheap food.

[twistedchick]

Bread dough, originally -- deep-fried in lard. Can't get much cheaper.

[kindkit]

$.89 cents at Dunkin Donuts, I believe. Cheaper in supermarkets. Krispy Kreme may cost more, but unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how I look at it) there is no Krispy Kreme in my town.

[resonant]

I grew up down the street from one of the original Krispy Kremes, and when a store opened in our former town, I was all excited -- but they were heavy and awful, not at all the delicacies I remembered. I'm willing to bet they used to be fried in lard, and somehow healthier oil made them heavier.

[kindkit]

That's quite possible--they may have originally been fried either in lard or one of the vegetable shortenings that now cause people to panic about trans fats. Both are supposed to be better, in terms of taste, texture, crispness, etc., for frying in than oil.

When I've had Krispy Kremes I've liked them, but I never found them as stellar as people said. Better than any other commercial doughnut, though.

[resonant]

There was a guy on Table Talk who responded to all the hype by calling them "redneck madeleines."

[brynwulf]

My experience with Krispy Kreme stems from elementary school fund raisers (we're talking the sixties). We'd go pre-sell, just like the Girl Scouts do their cookies, then the day they got delivered, this truck would pull up with hundreds of doughnuts in still warm boxes, fried fresh that morning. I blame KK for my early start in weight gain. I don't eat them now because I know that nothing could compare to the memory of them 40 years ago.

[out_there]

From a bakery, it's probably $2-$3 for a donut. From a supermarket, they're 6 for $2 (so .33c or so each).

Mind you, I still say "a dime a dozen" so sayings clearly live on when they're original reference is no longer current. (I mean, we don't even have dimes. We never have. We have 10c coins but no-one would refer to them as dimes.)

[resonant]

"Don't touch that dial!"

[out_there]

Hee! Exactly. I'm trying to think of another example but nothing comes to mind.

[resonant]

We still say "roll down the car window," even though for most people it's been years since 'rolling' had anything to do with it. (I just got power windows two years ago, but I was the laaaast person I knew who had to roll down a window.)

[out_there]

Huh. We don't say that. It's more "open the window".

[twistedchick]

Where are you (regionally speaking), that ten-cent coins aren't called dimes any more? Because they certainly still are where I am.

[out_there]

Not so much regionally speaking, as nationally speaking -- I'm in Australia. We have 10c coins (which we call, very imaginatively, "10 cent coins") but we've never had anything we refer to as a "dime", yet "a dime a dozen" is a common enough phrase here.

[twistedchick]

Different version of English in Australia than in the US (or Canada, or England, or New Zealand, even.) I'm noticing that as I read and watch Kerry Greenwood's Phryne Fisher mysteries.

[out_there]

You would notice it, especially in that show. It's very 1950s Australian, back when local usage was more UK-English based and before TV and the internet Americanised a lot of our English-usage.

For the same language, it's interesting how similar and differently it's used.

[via_ostiense]

The apple stand at the farmers market sells then for $0.50, but it's more thana dollar at the bakery stand.

[resonant]

Ooh, cider donuts.

[krait]

Chiming in with everyone else who eats cheap donuts. :D If at all possible, I buy them later in the day when they're marked down, too. (Or the dozen-for-three-bucks on-shelf name-brand kind.)

[resonant]

I can't eat them at all any more -- I mean, I could probably eat half a donut and not regret it later, but any more than half and the deliciousness is not worth 24 hours of very slow digestion. Approaching menopause has not done my digestive system any good. Breakfast meats are also problematic now.

[myalexandria]

at the farmer's market here they are 80 cents each!

[resonant]

And probably actually fresh, too!

[kay_mulan]

:)

dial m for mystery

[jesse_the_k]

One mystery has survived the long-ago abandonment of dial phones. We are still enjoined to "dial 911" (or 999 or 000); we "press one to dial voicemail"; we put our friends on "speed-dial" and there are equivalent "speed-dial" screens for our most frequently-visited web sites.

Hotels often instruct one to "touch 8 for room service," and voice-jail automated phone attendants demand we "press 1 for billing, 2 for customer service..." But in every day usage, when we push buttons (of plastic or light) we are dialong on our phones.