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When you hear a mafioso on the TV series “The Sopranos” call someone a ‘finoc,’ what does it mean?

Find out in the column below.

FENNEL / FINOCCHIO

Posted October 10, 2007

Would you like to try a new vegetable available in the winter? Then go shopping some late fall day in a good neighbourhood Italian market ― if you are lucky enough to live near one. Seek out neat piles of bulb fennel looking a bit like cut celery stalks. Ask the grocer for finocchio and be prepared for a couple of jokes (see below). The blanched stalks have a unique aroma and a light, sweet, subtle licorice taste. This works raw in a salad or cooked as a vegetable to gently support a main dish. The word lore of fennel is first, then recipe suggestions follow.

Genus: Foeniculum, Botanical Latin < faeniculum Latin, fennel <

faenum Latin, hay + iculum Latin, diminutive ending, meaning

‘little,’ ‘little hay’ in reference to the fancied resemblance

of fennel to hay or because it grew as a weed in hay fields. The

Indo-European root in the Latin word for hay, faenum, is *fe

‘making offspring’ which appears in other words like fecund,

feminine, and fetus. Much reduced, faeniculum entered Old French

as fenoil, then was borrowed into Old English as fenol,

eventually to produce the modern English spelling of fennel. The modern

French word is delightfully sinuous on the tongue, fenouil, a serpentine

coil of a word, helixing softly from tongue to palate.

yellow umbels of fennel flowers in a garden

Species: Foeniculum vulgare (vulgaris, Latin, ‘common’)

Belonging to the plant family Umbelliferae, the carrot or parsley family, fennel is a tender perennial commonly reaching a metre or more in height. Its feathery, green, faintly licorice-scented leaves and its seeds are among the oldest known culinary herbs, used particularly to flavour fish. In Italy, a related but smaller species, Foeniculum azoricum (Botanical Latin, of the Azores islands), Florentine fennel, is used as a vegetable. Its bulbous leaf base is used raw in salads or cooked as an individual vegetable serving. Fennel seeds are used in baked goods, sauces, and to flavour some European liqueurs. Italian hot and sweet sausages, the freshly made kind, often sing with fennel seed.

Swish That Stalk!

The Italian for fennel is finocchio, which is also the common

and insulting slang term for a homosexual male in Italy, making

it the equivalent of English putdowns like fag, fairy, and

queer. It originally denoted the stereotype of the homosexual

male who was overdressed or cross-dressed, all feathery and

plumaceous like fennel leaves. In some episodes of the TV series “The

Sopranos” the viewer can hear it shortened to its Italian street slang form

of “finoc.”

Finocchio Recipes

These are recipe suggestions. You’ll have to grab an Italian cookbook to discover the culinary details of preparation.

Fenoci in Salada – In spite of the recipe's name, the bulb fennel is cooked in this winter recipe from the northern Italian province of Vicenza.

Pisci di Terra is a Sicilian joking name (literally ‘land fish’) for this dish where the fennel bulbs are fried to a golden hue.

A salad with arugula, fennel and zucchini

Fenecchìjdde is a Pugliese dialect word for fennel soup, a favourite in Puglia on Christmas Eve. In the thick broth are small fennel bulbs, anchovy fillets, garlic, olive oil and salt.

Sformato di Finocchio is a creamy fennel delight, like a timbale, into which grated parmigiano has been melted. Yum!

There are un centinaio di ricette, about a hundred recipes, for fennel. It’s a winter treat for those whose weary summer taste buds cry out for something to brighten the senses on a cold day.

© 2012 copyright William Gordon Casselman

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Please email me at wordguy@shaw.ca

Reviews of My Book

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A Great New Review of My Latest Book!

October 26, 2011

Welcome to the Enchanted Forest

By WB Johnston

This review is about Bill Casselman’s latest e-book about words: Where a Dobdob Meets a Dikdik: A Word Lover’s Guide to the Weirdest, Wackiest, and Wonkiest Lexical Gems (Kindle Edition)

“Wade Davis, lately of National Geographic, once described each living language as “an old-growth forest of the human spirit.” Once you decide to enter the kleptomaniacal woods of our mother tongue, what you need is more than a tour guide. This is no Disney-fied ‘keep-your-hands-inside-the-car-at all-times’, point A to point B, clear-cutting mining of language. You, here, are in the hands of Sir William of Cassel, a genuine shaman modestly posing as a simple lover of words.

In the best of the spiritual tradition, Bill is the shape-shifter who constantly leads you to all the places you need to find in your soul. Every page is a new country, an invitation to an excursion into the wonderland of rich connections with the myriad of sources of what so often we unthinkingly wield as a prosaic tool.

Pay absolutely no attention to anyone who tells you that this book is anything but pure gold. It’s simply not true, sadly, that all the world loves a lover. Particularly someone whose love is so boundless.

But Sir William is fearless. You don’t earn your keep as a medicine man if you have a thin skin. While I cannot for the life of me understand how anyone could walk away from this book unmoved by its wit, its wisdom and the beautiful transparency by which the author celebrates the glorious romp of our almost unlimited linguistic exuberance, I have to sadly conclude that once in a while, you do meet someone who can’t see the forest for the trees, eh?

Read this book. Leave it on the sofa instead of the $%#!*$% TV remote. Maybe someone you care about will pick it up, even just for a moment, and fall in love with their heritage?

Leave it on your desk at work and trust that someone will riffle through it when you are out at lunch. Shamans are magicians of the highest order. The work of their hands and hearts is game-changing. Or, hey, put it on your Kindle and just feel comforted that you can wander back out into the forest with Bill even in the middle of a boring lecture.

Enjoy.”

(Casselman replies: Thank you so much, Dr. J., for the kudos.)

*********************

Jenni French of San Fancisco, California writes on her blog “My Corner of the Universe” for March 19, 2011:

Casselman, Bill. Where a Dobdob Meets a Dikdik: A World Lover’s Guide to the Weirdest, Wackiest, and Wonkiest Lexical Gems. Avon, MA: Adams Media, 2010.

“I admit it: I’m a word nerd. I love words: weird words, long words, obscure words, funny words.  This book is right up my alley.  With chapters like “Nautical Words,” “Creepy Words,” and “Edible Words,” I have enjoyed every page of this book. 

And the author has quite a way with words, so I have found myself rereading many sentences in this book and slowing my progress through it. 

My current favorite sentence is found in a discussion of dog hybrid breed names: “What a revolting concatenation of cutesiness and smarmy nomenclatorial treacle parading under the name of canine hybrid breed names” (19).

I’m sure I’ll have another favorite sentence in a day or two. 

This book is just that good and just that entertaining.”

(Author Bill Casselman replies: “Thanks, Jenni!” )

Just a reminder that this book contains my ALL-NEW word esssays, none of which are available anywhere else in print or online.

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Cindy Lapeña on her blog “Creativity Unlimited” of July 19 ,2011, writes:

Posted by mimrlith in 365 Things to Look Forward to.
Tags: 365 things to look forward to, books, reading

19. Starting a book

To a certified bibliophile like me, a.k.a. bookworm, one of the most exciting things to look forward to is to start reading a new book. In fact, sometimes the prospect of starting to read a new book is so exciting that I have to hurry to finish the book I am currently reading, just so I can start a new one.

If there’s one thing I can’t resist, it’s a book, especially if it promises to be a good one. Of course there are certain books I just won’t touch or be seen with, but at the risk of being hung by my thumbs by fans of such literature, I will not mention any genres in particular. . .

Seeing a book with a title that totally captivates me, like Where a Dobdob meets a Dikdik (yes, that is a book title!) has me so worked up, I just can’t wait to dive in. I imagine all sorts of deliciously fancifully outrageous words with a title like that. Is it obvious? I just love books on words. You won’t believe how many dictionaries I own. Or books on lexical oddities and other lexical explorations. Yes, I am a logophile of sorts. I love the new words I pick up from new books. I relish finding out the meanings of all manner of words and phrases and expressions. What could be more fun?”

(Replies author Bill Casselman: Please scroll to bottom of page or click here to link to a free seven-page preview of my new book, Where a Dobdob Meets a Dikdik.

********************

Testimonial Email

Thursday, February 3, 2011

Dear Mr. Casselman,
A search for the origins of an improbable-looking word, paraprosdokian, led me to the first piece of your prose I have had the pleasure of reading, “The Bogus Word Paraprosdokian & Lazy Con Artists of Academe.” I have just placed an order for Where a Dobdob Meets a Dikdik, Canadian Words & Sayings, and As The Canoe Tips, and will add more of your titles as I finish these.

I have just retired from a 40-plus year career in book publishing, the last thirty years spent as director/editor of a number of university presses, attempting to sort the genuine writers from the “Lazy Con Artists of Academe.” Sad to say, the latter have so over-bred the former that I could no longer see the rare gem in the avalanches of offal that daily swamped my office and desk. I visited your website and spent far too long there; it was a pleasure to meet a real writer through his work.

. . . I revisited the paraprosdokian page, and have finally quit laughing again at “Casselman’s Conclusion.” You were not unkind to the “profligate prof-lets.” During my years as an acquisitions editor, in rejection letters I often quoted Prof. Moses Hadas, classicist at Columbia University, who wrote a young scholar in response to having been sent the prof-let’s first book, “Thank you for sending me your book. I will waste no time reading it.”

I know I will enjoy your books. Keep up the good work.

Thank you,
Luther Wilson
Director (Retired)
University of New Mexico Press, among others

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