February 21, 2015

A link to an article titled "How to Stay Married to an Attorney" seems to be the best answer to the question...

... whether a doughnut is dessert if you eat it for breakfast and it's all you eat. 

ADDED: Commenters say they can't get to the Facebook post I'm linking, so I'll copy a few things. First, David Lat writes:
My latest debate with Zach Shemtob: is a doughnut a dessert? Zach's position: a doughnut is always and inherently a dessert. My position: a doughnut eaten in the morning is breakfast; a doughnut eaten later in the day is a dessert. (This issue is the subject of heated debate on Yahoo! Answers and elsewhere on the web.)
There are many answers, including my "It depends on whether you spell it 'donut' or 'doughnut'" — linking to my old post "Such proper ideas of doughnuts" —  and the one I thought most apt was just a link to a Wikihow piece titled "How to Stay Married to an Attorney."

34 comments:

Michael K said...

Bad link.

David said...

The document at the link is "currently unavailable."

Perfect.

madAsHell said...

I'll tell you that if she had stayed with the firm, and followed the partner track, then we would be divorced.

virgil xenophon said...

Just make sure he has lots of Life Insurance, sweetie..

tim maguire said...

My wife likes to say of cake and cookies, "that's not breakfast, that's desert." To which I usually respond, "then what are donuts and danishes?"

rhhardin said...

Laws of Attraction is a romantic comedy involving two competing divorce attorneys.

Formulaic, no insights, but that's most romantic comedies.

Two Weeks Notice is a good one with only one attorney (Sandra Bullock) and Hugh Grant ("I'm always hungry after I get divorced"). Some insights in this one.

One would be how at home males are with humor, compared to the just-as-smart female.

Left Bank of the Charles said...

A doughnut is never a dessert.

Ann Althouse said...

Oh, the link works for me... I guess because I'm friends.

I'll add some more stuff.

rhhardin said...

Camels can go for days on just one donut. This makes them useful in the desert.

Ann Althouse said...

I think the issue is really whether we're talking about substance or function. Are we talking about the nature of the food and using the word "dessert" to designate sweets or are we talking about the nature of the eating occasion and using the word "dessert" to designate topping off a meal with a change of pace that conveys the sense that we're stopping after this?

MisterBuddwing said...

"Doughnut" or "donut"? I'm still trying to figure out "catalogue" vs. "catalog."

rehajm said...

What time of day are you eating it?

rehajm said...

Last time there was a dessert couse for breakfast was...

traditionalguy said...

Hot Krispy Kremes and coffee are traditional breakfast, but the minute you Cream fill, Jelly fill or drip on them chocolate sauce you are having a Desert. And then there is having breakfast for dinner...

jr565 said...

Are pancakes or waffles desert or breakfast? If its sugar content you'll probably get more sugar out of a traditional breakfast than you would from a donut, so maybe traditional breakfast is actually desert.
back in my college days of drunkenness I'd go out at 2 in the morning and get an omelette. Was that breakfast?

jr565 said...

Wine in the mornin'
and breakfast at night
hey now baby
I'm begging to see the light.

(tying this back to the Lou Reed discussion from a few days ago)

jr565 said...

breakfast is something you eat in the morning. It's the break fast.
SO whatever it is, its breakfast.

jr565 said...

Dessert is usually a sweet dish you serve at the end of the meal. So if you eat the donuts last after your bacon and eggs it would be a dessert. If that was all you ate, it would be breakfast. Since there is no requirement that breakfast can't be sweet yummy donuts. Now suppose you ate the donuts first, and then had the eggs, would the eggs be the dessert?
Well they're not sweet, but they are served after the mean. So technically, yes.

jr565 said...

Then there is the argument that a dessert is a sweet dish at the end of an EVENING meal. So you could never have a dessert in the morning.
But that's just dumb.

jr565 said...

What if all you ate all day were donuts. Morning noon and night. What then?

Marc in Eugene said...

Time to look at the OED but, honestly, if there is any real use of 'dessert' to mean 'snack' or 'pastry or sweet bread eaten at breakfast' or any doubt the meanings of 'breakfast' beyond the fervid imaginations of the Lats of the world, I'll eat a doughnut event though in Lent I wasn't planning to. :-)

YoungHegelian said...

Okay, forgive me for going OT (not the first time), but I've never seen the Jewish last name Shemtob before. It means "Holy (or Good) Name, as in the Name of God.

An example would be referring to Rabbi Israel ben Eliezer by his honorific title, the Ba'al Shem Tov, that is, "master of the Holy Name".

Bruce Hayden said...

Getting a bit to the original question, yes, it is hard to stay married to an attorney. Maybe you really should marry in-kind. I would say something similar about doctors, but, then, thinking of my brothers, uncle, father-in-law, etc., I note that engineers can be trying too. My uncle went through their house and put plastic labels on all the drawers in the house, indicating what was supposed to go there, and removed a lot of the doors because they were inefficient. I think he was a mechanical engineer (I don't think that EEs are as bad).

I think that one of the big problems of living with attorneys is that they tend to be fairly literal, and split hairs when no one else cares, or even sees the hairs. And, yes, they often enjoy arguing, just to maybe argue. Attorneys can see subtleties and complexities that most cannot, or just don't care. Very little is black and white, and we can blame that on law professors like Ann.

Let me add though that I do like lawyers. I was raised by one, and so law school was not a shock to me. By now, I probably feel more comfortable around lawyers than most anyone else - though some STEM PhDs can come close. When I notice the gray, they don't think that I am weird. Or, any weirder than they are.

Amexpat said...

According to common usage and spelling, donuts are not a dessert. I've never seen one on a dessert menu.

As for breakfast, there's probably a lot more sugar in the cereals that most kids eat than in a donut. Most of the breakfast yogurts have a lot of sugar as well. And what about jam or Nutella on the morning toast?

traditionalguy said...

The phrase "It's time to make the donuts" is about the time Althouse starts blogging before sunrise. That settles that.

Laslo Spatula said...

Donuts with fillings are not donuts, they are just hand-held pies.

I am Laslo.

Mary Beth said...

Are breakfast and dessert mutually exclusive? If I eat a pudding cup for breakfast (it's made with milk, that means it has to be kind of healthful, right?), then I'm having a dessert for breakfast. Whatever you break your nighttime fast with is breakfast.

kcom said...

A donut is not, never has been, and never will be a dessert. Show me a single dessert menu in the entire world that features a donut section. Would you eat a donut after steak and potatoes? Or even after a ham sandwich? You eat a donut because you want a donut, whenever that is.

rehajm said...

A donut is not, never has been, and never will be a dessert. Show me a single dessert menu in the entire world that features a donut section.

Why does a dessert menu need a donut section in order to qualify the donut as a dessert?

There are plenty of dining establishments with donuts on the dessert menu, however.

ken in tx said...

Originally the term was dough naught, a zero made of dough.

Sam L. said...

jr565 said...

What if all you ate all day were donuts. Morning noon and night. What then?

2/21/15, 11:28 AM

FAT CITY!

David said...

Sometimes a donut is just a donut. In fact that may be true all the time.

kcom said...

Those were bakeries and donut shops - not restaurants. Tell me the entree those donuts served as dessert for?

Sluderlaw said...

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