The Healthy Weight Journal and the National Council Against Health Fraud announce their tenth annual Slim Chance Awards today. The Slim Chance Awards are designed to draw attention to what the two groups consider the worst fad diets and weight loss gimmicks.

As you probably know, not an awful lot separates a slim chance and a fat chance. A slim chance is small or scanty, while a fat chance is practically nonexistent. That slang sense of fat is one of the word's few senses that doesn't have a close relationship to largeness or heft.

Inveterate wordlovers know that our lexicon is fat with faddish synonyms for food. It's easy to see where eats comes from, while it's difficult to stomach the idea at the food-grub is related to the same grub that names the short, thick, wormlike larva of an insect.

Victuals, spelled either "victuals" or "vittles," comes from the Latin term for "nourishment" or "sustenance" (and which itself comes from the Latin verb meaning "to live"). The idea of tucking into a good meal inspired the noun tuck meaning "food," especially "sweet foods," such as pastry, jam, and candy. But the verb chowing down came after the noun chow. That word was cooked up (or should we say it's a reduction?) from the longer chowchow. In Chinese Pidgin English chowchow means "food"; in English, chowchow refers to either a Chinese preserve with heavy syrup or a relish with mustard sauce.

Speaking of Chinese, the old phrase "Chinaman's Chance" was a racist expression of how our nation's first Chinese people fared in the bigoted America of the 19th Century: mostly no chance at all! tjoeb};>

[ May 20, 2002, 01:47 AM: Message edited by: tjoebigham ]