Talk:Shrub (drink)

A fact from Shrub (drink) appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 27 September 2012 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:

Did you know... that serving shrubs has recently become a trend in bars across the United States, Canada, and London?

A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2012/September. The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Shrub (drink).

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Etymology[edit]

§Etymology says

As used here, the term "shrub" is a metathetic variant of the word "shurb", derived from the Arabic word sharāb meaning "to drink".

The statement cites Collins English Dictionary^[1] and Oxford Lexico^[2]. Their etymologies (underlining added):

Collins: C18: from Arabic sharāb, variant of shurb drink
Oxford Lexico: Early 18th century from Arabic šurb, šarāb, from šariba ‘to drink’; compare with sherbet and syrup.

Errors in the article's etymology:

shurb is not a variant of sharāb, but the other way around: sharāb is a variant of shurb.
Therefore, there is no metathesis involved. Metathesis refers to two sounds in a word or sentence trading places, as in the common pronunciation of "ask" as "ax" (="aks"). In the borrowing of sharāb into English, the short "a" in the first syllable was dropped, and the "ā", pronounced about like English "ah", became an "uh" sound as in the already existing word "shrub" meaning "A woody plant which is smaller than a tree and has several main stems arising at or near the ground".^[3]

I am correcting the article accordingly.

References

^ "English: shrub2". Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged (10th ed.). William Collins Sons & Co. 2009. Retrieved September 10, 2012.
^ "shrub2". Oxford Lexico. Oxford University Press. February 2020. Retrieved February 11, 2020.{{cite encyclopedia}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
^ "shrub1". Oxford Lexico. Oxford University Press. February 2020. Retrieved July 30, 2020.{{cite encyclopedia}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)

--Thnidu (talk) 19:56, 30 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Difford's Guide a questionable source[edit]

As a cocktail enthusiast, I love a sexy cocktail history, but the story that shrub was created to disguise the flavor of smuggled spirits fouled by storage underwater smells a bit too conveniently sexy. The source, Difford's Guide, is not a historical site but rather a bartending supplies company, and they mention that the author is a bartender, not a historian. Difford's Guide doesn't cite where they got this information. I don't think this meets Wikipedia's source quality guidelines.

Paul Kernfeld (talk) 19:39, 8 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

[1] "English: shrub2". Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged (10th ed.). William Collins Sons & Co. 2009. Retrieved September 10, 2012.

[OXFORD-2] "shrub2". Oxford Lexico. Oxford University Press. February 2020. Retrieved February 11, 2020.{{cite encyclopedia}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)

[3] "shrub1". Oxford Lexico. Oxford University Press. February 2020. Retrieved July 30, 2020.{{cite encyclopedia}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)

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