Made fresh
Sat 24th January 2009, 5.13 pm
Time for an English whinge. I've not had one of those for a while.
Recently, a new sandwich shop opened in town by the name of First Taste. It's a nice sandwich shop by all accounts, except that every side of the shop is emblazoned with the slogan "Real Food Made Fresh".
And today I noticed that the advertising for the McDonald's deli sandwiches includes the slogan "Made fresh every day".
Now is it just me that thinks the expression in this context should be "made freshly"? The "fresh" part is surely applying to the verb so should be in adverb form.
To me, "food made fresh" sounds like the shop/restaurant actually turns dodgy food into fresh food!
Searching on Google for various phrases involving this construction shows that about 100 times as many people use it than "made freshly". Am I wrong? Has usage won out in this context?
Tagged as: english fresh expression usage rant
PigleT
on Sat 24th January 2009, 9.58 pm
Yep, I can understand the case of the verb (is this one of those "intransitive" things confusing the subject/object?) making it the same as "rendered".
It may be that usage has won (not out, dammit) in this case, but I am wary of this meme that might-makes-right in English anyway.
It sounds more like a creeping Yank-ism to me, of the same ilk as "foo ended Tuesday", where I'm sure Tuesday would end itself without extra intervention.
Pete
on Sun 25th January 2009, 3.12 pm
Replace "fresh" with "free" and what do you get? "Born free, as free as the wind blows..."
I think it refers to the food (it's fresh) as well as the action (it's made freshly). Disregarding the Americanism of dropping the -ly suffix from the adverb, you could imagine the food is fresh, but gets made somewhere else and shipped in. Conversely, interpreting it such that "fresh" is an adverb and definitely not an adjective, you could imagine the food is stale but the sandwiches get made while-u-wait. I expect there is an unintentional pun here, with both meanings intended.
BTW, you might be interested in this article about what constitutes "correct" language: http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/001843.html
