FoodPorn

Ya know, I don't normally do this kind of "gotcha" thing, and hope you take it in the spirit of kind hearted joshing that it's intended.

It helps, when pulling a Confidently incorrect summons, to be correct about what you're accusing the person to be incorrect about.

And yeah, people that have no idea of the etymology of charcuterie might have created a usage of the word that's both inaccurate, but still acceptable because enough people are using the word that way. This happens a lot in living languages. Well, except the ones that have the life beat out of them by some kind of repository of what is and isn't allowed.

Which is still cool, because the word may be French in origin, and thus regulated in France, it is a borrowed word in English. It is inevitable that the word gain usages in English beyond what was originally there. I would argue that it has been in use long enough to have developed such. However, I would also argue that an anti-pasto plate is also sufficiently developed and used in English that the use of it for the pictured "porn" is not only at least equally correct, that it is also a better choice to describe the picture because more people are likely to know what anti-pasto is as a term than are likely to know what charcuterie means in any sense.

In other words, we've has anti-pasto as a term in English way longer than charcuterie. Well, at least better in the US; I don't doubt that Canadians may have had exposure to the French term first, though I don't know that as a fact. But, even here in the middle of bumfuck nowhere, deep in the southern mountains, I knew what anti-pasto was back in the eighties. I never heard of charcuterie until maybe five years ago, despite there being French descended families in our area.

And, yeah, that anecdote isn't some kind of rigorous proof or anything, but it's a general example of what I'm talking about re: language drift and borrowed terms.