Vocabulary word for the day: Spatchcock

Spatchcock is a method of cooking poultry. Especially, chicken, quail and Cornish Hens. The origin of the word is disputed and you can find a lot of information at The Naked Whiz's Ceramic Charcoal Cooker Pages. An excellent resource for ceramic cooker users. Check out the whole site, it's worth the trip.

Here are my wife's (who makes her living as Conan the Grammarian). favorite definitions:

The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

spatch·cock (spchkk) n.A dressed and split chicken for roasting or broiling on a spit.
tr.v. spatch·cocked, spatch·cock·ing, spatch·cocks 1. To prepare (a dressed chicken) for grilling by splitting open. 2. To introduce or interpose, especially in a labored or unsuitable manner: "Some excerpts from a Renaissance mass are spatchcocked into Gluck's pallid Don Juan music" (Alan Rich).




Forthright's Favorite Words

spatchcock (spach'kok) v or n (English, probably from dispatch and cock) To insert into a text too hurriedly or inappropriately; a fowl stuffed and cooked immediately after killing. This is probably my favourite word of all time. Though there's little use for it any more as a noun, the idea of hurriedly killing, stuffing and cooking a bird has enormous metaphorical value. As a verb, spatchcock is a term that should be picked up and used by every editor who has ever had to read a manuscript that has been prepared in such a manner.