Asklemmy

43891 readers

984 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy 🔍

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

Open-ended question
Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

Lemmyverse: community search
sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
[email protected]: a community for finding communities

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_[email protected]~

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

Is cake a sort of bread? (lemmy.ml)

submitted 4 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

95 comments fedilink hide all child comments

So according to Merriam Webster bread is: a usually baked and leavened food made of a mixture whose basic constituent is flour or meal

And cake is: A: a breadlike food made from a dough or batter that is usually fried or baked in small flat shapes and is often unleavened B: a sweet baked food made from a dough or thick batter usually containing flour and sugar and often shortening, eggs, and a raising agent (such as baking powder)

And yet some people don't think that cake is bread.

What's your opinion?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago (2 children)

If you google the question, you'll get lots of people saying that cake isn't bread, despite being similar.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 4 months ago

I think it's that people like certain levels of specificness. Like, bread, pizza, and broccoli are all foods, but if you said "I had a food for lunch" that'd sound weird.

It's not necessarily that cake isn't a type of bread or that the two aren't closely related. It's that we have a super-common and more specific word for it (cake) so it sounds awkward when you use a different word that might be technically accurate, but is a weird choice in practice.

Same for a lot of things. A hot dog and a sub are technically the same thing. But if a waiter dropped off your hot dog and said "here's your pork sub", you'd probably look at them funny.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago (2 children)

You asked the question, "is a cake a sort of bread" and the dictionary is explicitly stating "cake is a breadlike food".

Are you instead asking if "lots of people" is a more reliable source than the dictionary?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 months ago

Something can be breadlike without being bread, in a similar way to how whales are fishlike without being fish.

The dictionary doesn't dictate how words should be used; it reports how people use them. Consulting a dictionary is a way to find out how "lots of people" use a word.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago

No but like something being bread like doesn't mean that it is bread, just similar to bread.