There is a traditional butcher in Mapperley where I frequently pick up random and sometimes exotic cuts of meat. Venison from the Queen's plot in Scotland, ostrich farmed in Lancashire, and Lorne sausage among the varieties I've sampled.
This afternoon, I tried a fagot. It was less a force of appetite than a whim of curiosity that landed one of these traditional English meatballs in my grocery bag.
The first thing that comes to mind upon hearing the term is obviously not a meatball - or bundle of meat - although the etymology of the term does trace back to its 13th century definition of a bundle of sticks, often used to kindle a fire.
Instead, our generation would more readily associate the term, spelled with a double-'G', as a derogatory reference to a person who is homosexual.
For myself, one of Dion's home rolled cigarettes immediately sprung to mind. When I asked him whether he could quit smoking by replacing one fagot with the edible other he kindly reminded me that a ciggy is not a fagot, but a 'fag.'
This was my brief language lesson for the day - and I have one encouter with a foreign phrase or word nearly every day. It's a constant reminder that English - UK-English that is - is not my first language after all...
