{"id":2646,"date":"2018-01-17T08:30:15","date_gmt":"2018-01-17T14:30:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/?p=2646"},"modified":"2020-11-25T11:25:53","modified_gmt":"2020-11-25T17:25:53","slug":"why-a-y-tells-a-lie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/adjectives-adverbs\/why-a-y-tells-a-lie\/","title":{"rendered":"Why a Y<\/em> Tells a Lie"},"content":{"rendered":"

A few years ago, there was an ad campaign for an ice cream bar that was now supposedly better than ever because of its \u201c25 percent thicker chocolatey shell.\u201d Note the misdirection, worthy of a master magician: a thicker shell, yes! We all love chocolate, and now we\u2019re going to get more of it\u2014except, hey, wait a second: \u201cchocolatey\u201d? Who added that y<\/em> on the end?<\/p>\n

The Food and Drug Administration\u2019s longtime definition of chocolate says it must contain cocoa butter. In 2007, chocolate fanatics got wind of a 35-page petition to the FDA that would allow food purveyors to substitute vegetable oil for cocoa butter, allowing them to save big bucks and still call it chocolate. This infuriated the connoisseurs, who don\u2019t want chocolate degraded so that a bunch of fat cats can get richer.<\/p>\n

Besides, unlike cocoa butter, vegetable oil raises cholesterol levels, and true chocolate doesn\u2019t contain trans fats, which have been linked to infertility, heart disease and colon cancer.<\/p>\n

The ice cream bar tycoons are saving so much by using lower-cost ingredients that they can easily afford to give us 25 percent more\u2014but more what<\/em>? Cheap, fake chocolate, which probably means we get 25 percent less ice cream in the bargain. How long before they take it to the next step: a \u201cchocolatey, ice creamy\u201d bar to die for.<\/p>\n

The company and its ad agency figure that many of us don\u2019t see the slightest difference between chocolate<\/em> and chocolatey<\/em>.<\/p>\n

As for those of us who do notice it, the hope is that we\u2019ll take chocolatey<\/em> to mean \u201cabundant with,\u201d \u201cfull of,\u201d or \u201ccharacterized by\u201d chocolate. Many words take on this meaning when we add a y<\/em>: A chilly<\/em> evening is abundant with chill. A sandy<\/em> beach is full of sand. A thrifty<\/em> man is characterized by his frugality.<\/p>\n

But in other cases, tacking on that y<\/em> conveys \u201cevocative of\u201d or \u201chaving some of the same qualities as.\u201d We add it to a word to make a vivid metaphorical connection. Whereas an evening is described as \u201cchilly\u201d when there\u2019s literally a chill in the air, she gave him a chilly look<\/em> has nothing to do with weather conditions. A \u201cjuicy\u201d novel doesn\u2019t mean the pages are wet. No one expects you to launch into \u201cThe Girl from Ipanema\u201d because you\u2019re wearing a \u201cjazzy\u201d outfit.<\/p>\n

And that\u2019s the sordid secret of chocolatey<\/em>. By adding that little y<\/em>, the ice cream bar moguls have found a way to disguise their cynical cost-cutting schemes, expecting the consumer to read it as \u201cabundant with chocolate,\u201d instead of the other interpretation: \u201ckind of like chocolate.\u201d<\/p>\n

The late, great comedian George Carlin summed it up nicely: \u201cY\u2019know what \u2018rich chocolatey flavor\u2019 means? No [bleepin\u2019] chocolate.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A few years ago, there was an ad campaign for an ice cream bar that was now supposedly better than ever because of its \u201c25 percent thicker chocolatey shell.\u201d Note the misdirection, worthy of a master magician: a thicker shell, yes! We all love chocolate, and now we\u2019re going to get more of it\u2014except, hey, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2646","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adjectives-adverbs"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2646"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2646"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2646\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2646"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2646"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2646"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}