Peanut (pronounced pee-nuht)
(1) The pod or the enclosed edible seed of the plant,
Arachis hypogaea, of the legume family, native to the tropical Americas (and
probably of South American origin).
During the plant’s growth, the pod is forced underground where it
ripens. The edible,
nut-like seed is used for food and as a source of oil (historically known variously
also as the pinder, pinda and goober (used south of the Mason-Dixon Line
(originally as “goober pea)), earthnut, groundnut & monkey nut (pre-World
War II (1939-1945) UK use).
(2) The plant itself.
(3) Any small or insignificant person or thing; something
petty.
(4) In
US slang, a very small clam.
(5) In slang, barbiturates (recorded also of other
substances delivered in small pills).
(6) In slang, small pieces of Styrofoam used as a packing
material (known also as the “packing peanut”).
(7) Of or relating to the peanut or peanuts.
(8) Made with or from peanuts.
1790–1800: The construct may have been pea (in the sense
of the small green vegetable) + nut but may etymologists think it was more
likely a folk etymology of pinda or pinder, both forms still in
dialectal use south of the Mason-Dixon Line.
The plant is apparently native to South America and it was Portuguese
traders who early in the sixteenth century took peanuts from Brazil and Peru to
Africa by 1502. Its cultivation in Chekiang
(an eastern coastal province of China) was recorded as early as 1573 and the
crop probably arrived with the Portuguese ships which docked there. According to the broadcaster Alistair Cooke
(1908–2004), The spellings pea nut & pea-nut are obsolete. Peanut is a noun & verb.
Peanutted & peanutting are verbs and peanutty & peanutlike
are adjectives; the noun plural is peanuts.
The
word appears in many aspects of modern culture including “circus peanut” (a
type of commercial candy), “cocktail peanuts” (commercially packaged salted nuts
served (for free) in bars to heighten thirst and thus stimulate beverage sales
(also known generically as “beer nuts”)), “peanut butter” (a spread made from
ground peanuts and known also as “peanut paste”), “peanut butter and jelly” (a
sandwich made with jelly (jam or conserve) spread on one slice and peanut
butter on the other), “small peanuts” (very small amount (always in the plural),
“peanut milk” (a milky liquid made from peanuts and used as a milk substitute),
peanut brittle (a type of brittle (confection) containing peanuts in a hard toffee),
“peanut butter cup” (a chocolate candy with peanut butter filling), “peanut
bunker” (a small menhaden (a species of fish)), “hog peanut” (a plant native to
eastern North America that produces edible nut-like seeds both above &
below ground (Amphicarpaea bracteata)), “peanut worm” ( sipunculid worm; any
member of phylum Sipuncula. (Sipuncula spp), “peanut cactus” (a cactus of species
Chamaecereus silvestrii), “peanut ball” (in athletics & strength training,
an exercise ball comprised of two bulbous lobes and a narrower connecting
portion), “peanut marzipan” (a peanut confection made with crushed peanuts
& sugar, popular in Central & South America), “peanut whistle” (in the
slang of the ham radio and citizens band (CB) radio communities, a low-powered
transmitter or receiver, “peanut tree” (A tree of the species Sterculia
quadrifida), “peanut-headed lanternfly” (In entomology, a species of
Neotropical fulgorid planthopper (Fulgora laternaria)) and peanut tube (in
electronics, a type of small vacuum tube).
Herbert
(HW) Horwill’s (1864-1943) A Dictionary of Modern American Usage (1935) was
written as kind of trans-Atlantic companion to Henry Fowler’s (1858–1933)
classic A Dictionary of Modern English Usage (1926) and was one of the earliest
volumes to document on a systematic basis the variations and dictions between
British and American English. The book
was a kind of discussion about the phrase “England and America are two countries separated by one
language” attributed to George Bernard Shaw (GBS; 1856-1950)
although there are doubts about that.
Horwill had an entry for “peanut” which he noted in 1935 was common in
the US but unknown in the UK where it was known as the “monkey nut”. According to the broadcaster Alistair Cooke
(1908–2004), the world “peanut” became a thing in the UK during the early 1940s
when the US government included generous quantities of the then novel peanut
butter in the supplies of foodstuffs included in the Lend-Lease arrangements.
In
idiomatic use, the phrase “if you pay peanuts, you get monkeys” is used to
suggest that if only low wages are offered for a role, high quality applicants are
unlike to be attracted to the position. The
phrase “peanut gallery” is one of a number which have enter the language from
the theatre. The original Drury Lane theatre
in London where William Shakespeare’s (1564–1616) were staged was built on the
site of a notorious cockpit (the place where gamecocks fought, spectators gambling
on the outcome) and even before this bear and bull-baiting pits had been used
for theatrical production of not the highest quality. That’s the origin of the “pit” in this context
being the space at the rear of the orchestra circle, the pit sitting behind the
more desirable stalls. By the Elizabethan
era (1558-1603), the poor often sat on the ground (under an open sky) while the
more distant raised gallery behind them contained the seats which were cheaper
still; that’s the origin of the phrase “playing to the gallery” which describes
an appeal to those with base, uncritical tastes although “gallery god” (an
allusion to the paintings of the gods of antiquity which were on the gallery’s
wall close to the ceiling) seems to be extinct.
The “peanut gallery” (the topmost (ie the most distant and thus cheapest)
rows of a theatre) was a coining in US English dating from 1874 because it was
the habit of the audience to cast upon to the stage the shells of the peanuts
they’d been eating although whether this was ad-hoc criticism or general delinquency
isn’t known. The companion phrase was “hush
money”, small denomination coins tossed onto the stage as a “payment” to
silence an actor whose performance was judged substandard. “Hush money” of course has endured to be
re-purposed, now used of the payments such as the one made by Donald Trump (b
1946; US president 2017-2021; president elect 2024) to Stormy Daniels (stage
name of Stephanie Gregory, b 1979).
Joseph "Vinegar
Joe" Stilwell (1883–1946) was a US Army general who was appointed chief of
staff to the Chinese Nationalist Leader, Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek
(1887-1975) (Generalissimo was a kind of courtesy title acknowledging his
position as supreme leader of his armed forces; officially his appointment in
1935 was as 特級上將 (Tèjí shàng jiàng) (high general special class)). Stilwell’s role was to attempt to coordinate
the provision of US funds and materiel to Chiang with the objectives of having
the Chinese Nationalist forces operate against the Imperial Japanese Army in
Burma (now known usually as Myanmar).
Unfortunately, the generalissimo viewed the Chinese communists under Chairman
Mao (Mao Zedong 1893–1976; chairman of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)
1949-1976) as a more immediate threat than that of Nippon and his support for
US strategy was no always wholehearted.
So Stilwell
didn’t have an easy task and in his reports to Washington DC referred to Chiang
as “Peanut”. Apparently, “peanut” had originally
been allocated to Chiang as one of the army’s random code-names with no
particular meaning but greatly it appealed to Stillwell who warmed to the
metaphorical possibilities, once recorded referring to Chiang and his creaking
military apparatus as “...a peanut perched on top of a dung heap...” That about summed up Stillwell’s view of
Chiang and his “army” and in his diary he noted a military crisis “would be worth it”
were the situation “…just sufficient to get rid of the Peanut without entirely
wrecking the ship…” A
practical man, his plans extended even to assassinating the generalissimo although
these were never brought to fruition.
Eventually, Stilwell was recalled to Washington while Chiang fought on
against the communists until 1949 when the Nationalists were forced to flee across
the straits of Formosa to the Island of Taiwan, the “renegade province” defying
the CCP in Beijing to this day.
Stillwell did have one final satisfaction before being sacked, in 1944
handing Chiang an especially wounding letter from Franklin Delano Roosevelt
(FDR, 1882–1945, US president 1933-1945), the reaction so pleasing he was moved
to write a poem:
I have
waited long for vengeance,
At last
I've had my chance.
I've
looked the Peanut in the eye
And kicked
him in the pants.
The old
harpoon was ready
With
aim and timing true,
I sank
it to the handle,
And
stung him through and through.
The
little bastard shivered,
And
lost the power of speech.
His
face turned green and quivered
As he
struggled not to screech.
For all
my weary battles,
For all
my hours of woe,
At last
I've had my innings
And
laid the Peanut low.
I know
I've still to suffer,
And run
a weary race,
But oh!
the blessed pleasure!
I've
wrecked the Peanut's face.
Phobias
One who suffers a morbid fear of peanut butter sticking to the roof of one's mouth is said to be an arachibutyrophobe. Phobias need not be widely diagnosed conditions; they need only be specific and, even if suffered by just one soul in the world, the criteria are fulfilled. In this sense, phobias are analogous with syndromes. A phobia is an anxiety disorder, an unreasonable or irrational fear related to exposure to certain objects or situations. The phobia may be triggered either by the cause or an anticipation of the specific object or situation.
The fifth edition of the American Psychiatric Association's (APA) Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5 (2013)) made some interesting definitional changes from the earlier DSM-4 (1994): (1) A patient no longer needs to acknowledge their anxiety is excessive or unreasonable in order to receive a diagnoses, it being required only that their anxiety must be “out of proportion” to the actual threat or danger (in its socio-cultural context). (2) Symptoms must now, regardless of age, last at least six months. (3) The diagnostic criteria for social phobias no longer specify that age at onset must be before eighteen, a change apparently necessitated by the substantial increase in reporting by older adults with the DSM editors noting the six-month duration threshold exists to minimize the over-diagnosis of transient fears.
Whether it was already something widely practiced isn’t known but Lindsay Lohan is credited with introducing to the world the culinary novelty Oreos & peanut butter in The Parent Trap. According to the director, it was added to the script “…for no reason other than it sounded weird and some cute kid would do it." Like some other weirdnesses, the combination has a cult following and for those who enjoy peanut butter but suffer arachibutyrophobia, Tastemade have provided a recipe for Lindsay Lohan-style Oreos with a preparation time (including whisking) of 2 hours. They take 20 minutes to cook and in this mix there are 8 servings (scale ingredients up to increase the number of servings).
Ingredients
2 cups flour
1 cup unsweetened cocoa powder (plus more for dusting)
¾ teaspoon kosher salt
Powdered sugar, for dusting
Filling Ingredients
½ cup unsalted butter, at room temperature
A pinch of kosher salt (omit if using salted peanut butter)
Filling Instructions
(1) With a stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, the butter & peanut butter until creamy.
(2) Gradually add powdered sugar and beat to combine, then beat in vanilla and salt.
Whisking the mix.
Instructions
(1) Preheat the oven to 325°F (160°C). Line two baking sheets with parchment paper.
(2) In small bowl, whisk together flour, cocoa powder & salt.
(3) In a stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Mix in the vanilla extract. With the mixer running on low speed, add the flour mixture and beat until just combined (it should remain somewhat crumbly).
(4) Pour mixture onto a work surface and knead until it’s “all together”; wrap half in plastic wrap and place in refrigerator.
(5) Lightly dust surface and the top of the dough with a 1:1 mixture of cocoa powder and powdered sugar.
(6) Working swiftly and carefully, roll out dough to a ¼-½ inch (6-12 mm) thickness and cut out 2 inch (50 mm) rounds. Transfer them to the baking sheets, 1 inch (25 mm) apart (using a small offset spatula helps with this step). Re-roll scraps and cut out more rounds, the repeat with remaining half of the dough.
(7) Bake cookies until the tops are no longer shiny ( about 20 minutes), then cool on pan for 5 minutes before transferring to wire rack completely to cool.
(8) To assemble, place half the cookies on a plate or work surface.
(9) Pipe a blob of filling (about 2 teaspoons) onto the tops of each of these cookies and then place another cookie on top, pressing slightly but not to the extent filled oozes from the sides.
(10) Refrigerate for a few minutes to allow the filling to firm up. Store in an air-tight container in refrigerator.
The manufacturer embraced the idea of peanut butter Oreos and has released versions, both with the classic cookie and a peanut butter & jelly (jam) variation paired with its “golden wafers”. As well as Lindsay Lohan’s contribution, Oreos have attracted the interest of mathematicians. Nabisco in 1974 introduced the Double Stuf Oreo, the clear implication being a promise the variety contained twice crème filling supplied in the original. However, a mathematician undertook the research and determined Double Stuf Oreos contained only 1.86 times the volume of filling of a standard Oreo. Despite that, the company survived the scandal and the Double Stuf Oreo’s recipe wasn’t adjusted.
Scandalous in its own way was that an April 2022 research paper published in the journal Physics of Fluids wasn’t awarded that year’s Ig Nobel Prize for physics, the honor taken by Frank Fish, Zhi-Ming Yuan, Minglu Chen, Laibing Jia, Chunyan Ji & Atilla Incecik, for their admittedly ground-breaking (or perhaps water-breaking) work in explaining how ducklings manage to swim in formation. More deserving surely were Crystal Owens, Max Fan, John Hart & Gareth McKinley who introduced to physics the discipline of Oreology (the construct being Oreo + (o)logy). The suffix -ology was formed from -o- (as an interconsonantal vowel) + -logy. The origin in English of the -logy suffix lies with loanwords from the Ancient Greek, usually via Latin and French, where the suffix (-λογία) is an integral part of the word loaned (eg astrology from astrologia) since the sixteenth century. French picked up -logie from the Latin -logia, from the Ancient Greek -λογία (-logía). Within Greek, the suffix is an -ία (-ía) abstract from λόγος (lógos) (account, explanation, narrative), and that a verbal noun from λέγω (légō) (I say, speak, converse, tell a story). In English the suffix became extraordinarily productive, used notably to form names of sciences or disciplines of study, analogous to the names traditionally borrowed from the Latin (eg astrology from astrologia; geology from geologia) and by the late eighteenth century, the practice (despite the disapproval of the pedants) extended to terms with no connection to Greek or Latin such as those building on French or German bases (eg insectology (1766) after the French insectologie; terminology (1801) after the German Terminologie). Within a few decades of the intrusion of modern languages, combinations emerged using English terms (eg undergroundology (1820); hatology (1837)). In this evolution, the development may be though similar to the latter-day proliferation of “-isms” (fascism; feminism et al). Oreology is the study of the flow and fracture of sandwich cookies and the research proved it is impossible to split the cream filling of an Oreo cookie down the middle.
The core finding in Oreology was that the filling always adheres to one side of the wafer, no matter how quickly one or both cookies are twisted. Using a rheometer (a laboratory instrument used to measure the way in which a viscous fluid (a liquid, suspension or slurry) flows in response to applied forces), it was determined creme distribution upon cookie separation by torsional rotation is not a function of rate of rotation, creme filling height level, or flavor, but was mostly determined by the pre-existing level of adhesion between the creme and each wafer. The research also noted that were there changes to the composition of the filling (such as the inclusion of peanut butter) would influence the change from adhesive to cohesive failure and presumably the specifics of the peanut butter chosen (smooth, crunchy, extra-crunchy, un-salted (although the organic varieties should behave in a similar way to their mass-market equivalents)) would have some effect because the fluid dynamics would change. The expected extent of the change would be appear to be slight but until further research is performed, this can’t be confirmed.
