fletcherize

"Nature will castigate those who don't masticate" was one of the catchy slogans invented by Horace Fletcher, a self-styled dietician who, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, convinced thousands of people to chew each mouthful of food thirty-two times, a number partly determined by most people having thirty-two teeth. This was not Fletcher's only contribution to nutrition, but it is the one that became attached to his name: "fletcherize" appeared in 1903 as a verb meaning "to chew thoroughly." Fletcher's surname, incidentally, means "arrow-maker," a job once held, presumably, by one of his ancestors.

what is an ort?

an ort was originally a scrap of food or leftover fodder not eaten by cattle or pigs. The word then came to be applied to leftovers from the kitchen table, leftovers that were also known as relief or relics. Ort appeared in the mid fifteenth century as a compound of the prefix oor, meaning not, and etan, meaning to eat; quite literally, therefore, orts are the uneaten scraps of a meal.

mark morton is the author of Cupboard Love: A Dictionary of Culinary Curiosities (Insomniac Press, 2004). His most recent books are The Lover's Tongue: A Merry Romp through the Language of Love and Sex and The End: Closing Words for a Millennium. He teaches English and Learning Technologies at the University of Waterloo in Canada.

previous orts:
abligurition
cornucopia
banyan day
spurtle
appetite
plague-water
nym
spork