So the Super Wal-Mart near me has "Value Added" French Bread with
garlic Parmesan, rosemary herb, "everything" topping, and a couple
others. When my roommate or myself buys loaves of these bread we try
to inspect as much as possible to check for air bubbles. (Because I'm
not fond of gaping holes in my sandwich.) Sometimes we have to resort
to buying unsliced bread rather than sliced bread either because the
sliced all has air bubbles or there's just no sliced available.

So it's a little annoying to have to slice bread in the morning, but
it's not too bad. Plus it actually gives you more control over your
sandwich. It allows you to increase the ingredients to bread ratio
without absolutely piling on the what you want in the sandwich. So
while sliced bread is a nice convenience I don't quite see how it's
the "greatest thing since sliced bread."

Wayland
...what do you think?

Wayland wrote:
So the Super Wal-Mart near me has "Value Added" French Bread with
garlic Parmesan, rosemary herb, "everything" topping, and a couple
others. When my roommate or myself buys loaves of these bread we try
to inspect as much as possible to check for air bubbles. (Because I'm
not fond of gaping holes in my sandwich.) Sometimes we have to resort
to buying unsliced bread rather than sliced bread either because the
sliced all has air bubbles or there's just no sliced available.

So it's a little annoying to have to slice bread in the morning, but
it's not too bad. Plus it actually gives you more control over your
sandwich. It allows you to increase the ingredients to bread ratio
without absolutely piling on the what you want in the sandwich. So
while sliced bread is a nice convenience I don't quite see how it's
the "greatest thing since sliced bread."

Wayland
...what do you think?

I don't think I like: "When my roommate or myself buys loaves of these
bread..."; "this bread" surely.

On 4 Aug 2006 16:00:59 +0200, Wayland
wrote:

So the Super Wal-Mart near me has "Value Added" French Bread with
garlic Parmesan, rosemary herb, "everything" topping, and a couple
others. When my roommate or myself buys loaves of these bread we try
to inspect as much as possible to check for air bubbles. (Because I'm
not fond of gaping holes in my sandwich.) Sometimes we have to resort
to buying unsliced bread rather than sliced bread either because the
sliced all has air bubbles or there's just no sliced available.

So it's a little annoying to have to slice bread in the morning, but
it's not too bad. Plus it actually gives you more control over your
sandwich. It allows you to increase the ingredients to bread ratio
without absolutely piling on the what you want in the sandwich. So
while sliced bread is a nice convenience I don't quite see how it's
the "greatest thing since sliced bread."

...what do you think?

If you had a large family to make lunch sandwiches for before
packing them off to work and school you might think idfferently.
When I was a small child un-sliced bread was the norm. We got our
bread at a bakery in our Finnish neighborhood and when they
bought a bread slicing machine it was considred a clear boon.

Nevertheless, I believe the phrase was originally intended to be
ironic.

************* DAVE HATUNEN ) *************
* Tucson Arizona, out where the cacti grow *
* My typos & mispellings are intentional copyright traps *

Troy Steadman wrote:

Wayland wrote:
So the Super Wal-Mart near me has "Value Added" French Bread with
garlic Parmesan, rosemary herb, "everything" topping, and a couple
others. When my roommate or myself buys loaves of these bread we
try to inspect as much as possible to check for air bubbles.

I don't think I like: "When my roommate or myself buys loaves of these
bread..."; "this bread" surely.

If you're going to nit-pick grammar, what about the use of "myself"
there? Having it as the subject of that sentence isn't very good usage.
Yes, there's no hard and fast rule that requires "myself" only in the
case where it's a reflexive pronoun (the object of a sentence with the
subject as the author), but still. Try removing the other person from
the sentence, and you get "When myself buys loaves . . ."

Also, it should be "buy", I'd think, as the personal pronoun came
second. I buy, you buy, he buys, she buys, etc.

It's a given that there will be at least one questionable or downright
incorrect instance of usage in my text, by usenet rules.




Brian

--
If televison's a babysitter, the Internet is a drunk librarian who
won't shut up.
-- Dorothy Gambrell (http://catandgirl.com)

Hatunen wrote:
[...]
If you had a large family to make lunch sandwiches for before
packing them off to work and school you might think idfferently.
When I was a small child un-sliced bread was the norm. We got our
bread at a bakery in our Finnish neighborhood and when they
bought a bread slicing machine it was considred a clear boon.

Nevertheless, I believe the phrase was originally intended to be
ironic.

As I've said, my intuition is that "sliced bread" refers to the
ready-sliced and wrapped stuff, not to classical bread which a baker
has put through his machine. That's bread which has been sliced, rather
than "sliced bread". I'm not at all sure that it even refers primarily
to reasonable-quality bread which comes sliced and packed. In Britain
at any rate, the first branded factory-sliced bread was the horrid kind
("Wonderloaf"? Maybe "Mother's Pride") and that's the image which the
phrase brings to my mind: ICBW, but I don't think you could generally
get it _except_ in the sliced form, so "sliced" was part of its
definition.

--
Mike.

wrote:
Hatunen wrote:
[...]
If you had a large family to make lunch sandwiches for before
packing them off to work and school you might think idfferently.
When I was a small child un-sliced bread was the norm. We got our
bread at a bakery in our Finnish neighborhood and when they
bought a bread slicing machine it was considred a clear boon.

Nevertheless, I believe the phrase was originally intended to be
ironic.

As I've said, my intuition is that "sliced bread" refers to the
ready-sliced and wrapped stuff, not to classical bread which a baker
has put through his machine. That's bread which has been sliced,
rather than "sliced bread". I'm not at all sure that it even refers
primarily to reasonable-quality bread which comes sliced and packed.
In Britain at any rate, the first branded factory-sliced bread was
the horrid kind ("Wonderloaf"? Maybe "Mother's Pride") and that's
the
image which the phrase brings to my mind: ICBW, but I don't think
you
could generally get it _except_ in the sliced form, so "sliced" was
part of its definition.

When I was twenty and poor and in a far place (Little Ark Rockinsaw),
my friend and I would wander the streets accumulating impressions and
hunger. On the numerous occasions we managed this at appropriate
hours, we'd find our way to the local bakery of Sliced Bread (Wonder)
at the time the bread was still hot and unsliced. For twenty cents the
friendly baker would sell us an unsliced loaf so hot it melted the wax
on the spotted W'bread wrapper he provided. For a block or two and an
hour or two we were happy and un-hungry.

I remember learning the difference between French bread and anyone
else's was that it contained no milk products.

--
Frank ess

Frank ess wrote:
[...touching tale of privation bravely borne snipped...]
I remember learning the difference between French bread and anyone
else's was that it contained no milk products.

Not sure about milk products, but the reason French and other bread
doesn't keep is that it's very lean: the classic English-type bread
has, IIRC, an ounce of lard to a pound or two of flour.

--
Mike.

Wayland wrote:

...what do you think?

In this thread there is very little history given re the OP, so to fill
in that part of the story:

A newspaper in 1950 claimed to identify the first loaf of sliced bread;
see

http://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi...L=ads-l&P=4237

"...The first sliced loaf of bread was produced in July of
1928...." (Chillicothe, Missouri)

Barry Popik searched for a long time to find the first printed usage of
"greatest thing since sliced bread" - he came up with Red Skelton
using it in a 1952 interview, in response to a question about how he
felt about TV; see:

http://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi...L=ads-l&P=5215

I'd agree that the phrase is an idiom now. As to how much irony
Skelton intended, I'd say only that he was capable of slathering on
quite a bit of it.

Troy Steadman wrote:
Wayland wrote:
So the Super Wal-Mart near me has "Value Added" French Bread with
garlic Parmesan, rosemary herb, "everything" topping, and a couple
others. When my roommate or myself buys loaves of these bread we try
to inspect as much as possible to check for air bubbles. (Because I'm
not fond of gaping holes in my sandwich.) Sometimes we have to resort
to buying unsliced bread rather than sliced bread either because the
sliced all has air bubbles or there's just no sliced available.

So it's a little annoying to have to slice bread in the morning, but
it's not too bad. Plus it actually gives you more control over your
sandwich. It allows you to increase the ingredients to bread ratio
without absolutely piling on the what you want in the sandwich. So
while sliced bread is a nice convenience I don't quite see how it's
the "greatest thing since sliced bread."

Wayland
...what do you think?

I don't think I like: "When my roommate or myself buys loaves of these
bread..."; "this bread" surely.

"SPELL CHECK ON AISLE 5!"

Hatunen wrote:
On 4 Aug 2006 16:00:59 +0200, Wayland
wrote:

So the Super Wal-Mart near me has "Value Added" French Bread with
garlic Parmesan, rosemary herb, "everything" topping, and a couple
others. When my roommate or myself buys loaves of these bread we try
to inspect as much as possible to check for air bubbles. (Because I'm
not fond of gaping holes in my sandwich.) Sometimes we have to resort
to buying unsliced bread rather than sliced bread either because the
sliced all has air bubbles or there's just no sliced available.

So it's a little annoying to have to slice bread in the morning, but
it's not too bad. Plus it actually gives you more control over your
sandwich. It allows you to increase the ingredients to bread ratio
without absolutely piling on the what you want in the sandwich. So
while sliced bread is a nice convenience I don't quite see how it's
the "greatest thing since sliced bread."

...what do you think?

If you had a large family to make lunch sandwiches for before
packing them off to work and school you might think idfferently.
When I was a small child un-sliced bread was the norm. We got our
bread at a bakery in our Finnish neighborhood and when they
bought a bread slicing machine it was considred a clear boon.

Nevertheless, I believe the phrase was originally intended to be
ironic.

"Fortified with irony"


************* DAVE HATUNEN ) *************
* Tucson Arizona, out where the cacti grow *
* My typos & mispellings are intentional copyright traps *