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Topic: Upper crust

A question about the upper crust (both noun and adjective) found us reviewing an apocryphal explanation shaped from long-ago lore.

Need the back story? Once upon a time, bread baked in wood-fired ovens would cook unevenly: the bottom portion would burn while the top would be perfectly browned. Naturally, in those socially and economically stratified days, breadbakers would simply make do by slicing each loaf horizontally. The lower half of the bread would be distributed to the masses, while the tasty upper half of the bread (including the crust) was reserved for the highest social class. This is how (or so the story goes), upper crust came to name "the highest class of society."

Does this idea sound half-baked? For starters, there's no evidence that bread baked in wood-fired ovens didn't cook evenly. Secondly, there's just about the same amount of evidence that bread loaves were ever cut horizontally and divided between the hoi polloi and the hoity-toity.

So what do we know about the term upper crust? The term upper crust was applied to the top half of bread in the 15th century and to the upper layers of Earth in the 16th. The figurative reference to the highest social class or group, particularly the highest circle of the upper class, wasn't spotted in print until the early 19th century in the young United States.

Questions or comments? Write us at wftw@aol.com Production and research support for Word for the Wise comes from Merriam-Webster, publisher of language reference books and Web sites including Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, Eleventh Edition.

gee whiz, you'd think they'd know how to make Yorkshire pudding in the UK... very very strange...