Talk:hash brownie

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hash brownie

Tagged but not listed, for reasons I don't understand. Sorry, that's all I have. Mglovesfun (talk) 20:28, 15 May 2012 (UTC)

Keep or come up with a logic for deletion. Mglovesfun (talk) 20:28, 15 May 2012 (UTC)

If I understand the entry correctly it's just a brownie containing hash? If so, delete -- Liliana • 20:31, 15 May 2012 (UTC)

As far as I know, we don’t have them in the U.S. It seems to be a British snackfood. —Stephen ^(Talk) 20:52, 15 May 2012 (UTC)

Err, "brownie" is an Americanism. They do not exist in the Commonwealth. ---> Tooironic (talk) 22:08, 15 May 2012 (UTC)

Sure they do, but I'd say it's of American origin, the word, that is. Mglovesfun (talk) 22:15, 15 May 2012 (UTC)

Americans might call them pot brownies. They're definitely eaten in America - see the execrable Transformers 2 for an example. Smurrayinchester (talk) 21:17, 15 May 2012 (UTC)

@Stephen, I don't know whether to interpret your comment as a dry jibe at the UK, or evidence of a sheltered upbringing :). (Not meant as a dig at you either way, mind you.) Hash / hashish is a processed form of pot that is supposed to have a higher concentration of the active ingredient THC, so a "hash brownie" is not quite the same thing as a "pot brownie". -- Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 21:28, 15 May 2012 (UTC)

Yes, I have heard of pot brownies, but to my knowledge hashish is not found in the U.S. I have never heard of anyone here being arrested or charged for possession of or trafficking in hashish. I’m not involved in that world, so it is possible that there is hash floating around, but I haven’t heard anything about it. —Stephen ^(Talk) 02:03, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

FWIW, my experience is the same as yours. —Ruakh_TALK 02:07, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

I think I remember hearing them called "hash brownies" when I was in high school in Texas—despite the fact that they were made with marijuana rather than hashish, and despite the very confusing similarity to the term hash browns, which refers to a completely different kind of food. —Angr 07:15, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

I believe the confusion with hash browns is intentional, as a play on words: hash browns are the epitome of prosaic and everyday, so it's playing the wild and illicit nature of pot brownies against that. Chuck Entz (talk) 08:04, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

@Stephen, @Ruakh -- hash isn't as common in the US as regular pot, but it can definitely be found within the country. (Or, at any rate, it was around when I was at uni in the early 90s.) -- Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 16:00, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

"Pot brownie" seems to be an attestable set phrase in its own right:

2003 December 9, Christopher Lloyd, "High Holidays", episode 11-11 of Frasier, 00:09:03-00:09:13:

Niles Crane: Just take a look. Ah, yes, thick and gooey. Ganja in its purest form.
Roz Doyle: It's a pot brownie, you idiot.

Astral (talk) 22:13, 15 May 2012 (UTC)

Brilliant, we were just watching that episode last night on Netflix. Good writing, that series. -- Eiríkr Útlendi │ Tala við mig 22:50, 15 May 2012 (UTC)

Keep. This doesn't seem SOP to me. "Hash" and "brownie" both have multiple senses that can combine in coherent, if odd, ways. Hash + brownie could be taken to mean a small piece of chocolate cake containing "meat and potatoes, chopped and mixed together", a helpful household elf who makes you "meat and potatoes, chopped and mixed together", or a not-so-helpful household elf who spends all day smoking hashish. But it's only used to indicate the sense given in the entry. Astral (talk) 21:16, 15 May 2012 (UTC)

Keep (although take out the picture, since it's not of hash brownies). We have entries on apple cider, apple pie, rice wine, malt vinegar, pork pie, etc. It seems like for one reason or another, SOP rules don't apply as severely to food products - perhaps because they are more likely to be interprets as single lexical units. As such, I don't see any reason to delete this. (The deletion reason also claimed it was too similar to the definition for brownies. I rewrote it a little (to make clear that it's eaten as a drug), but frankly that seems like something for cleanup, not deletion) Smurrayinchester (talk) 21:17, 15 May 2012 (UTC)

The others are idiomatic though. pork pie, for example, refers to a specific kind of pie - I could add pork to apple pie, but that wouldn't make it pork pie. Hash brownie is different - you can just add hash to any brownie to make it a hash brownie. -- Liliana • 21:22, 15 May 2012 (UTC)

The logic advanced would certainly require us to have chocolate brownie, as we have four senses of (deprecated template usage) brownie and three senses of (deprecated template usage) chocolate. I think there are enough senses of (deprecated template usage) red and (deprecated template usage) car to require and entry for similar clarification, by the same logic. And peach pie. DCDuring TALK 21:37, 15 May 2012 (UTC)

Liliana-60 seems to be right, compare hash cake. Citation: "I'm making a hash cake." "Why?" "Sammy doesn't like smoking it since he's given up cigarettes, and John's coming over later." Ergo delete. Mglovesfun (talk) 21:38, 15 May 2012 (UTC)

I don't think the red car argument really applies in this case. A red car differs from a blue car of the same make only by a superficial paint job. A hash brownie is qualitatively different than a standard brownie in a significant way - the added ingredient gives it psychoactive effects, and presumably also alters the taste. To say it's just a brownie with hash in it kind of strikes me as not seeing the forest for the trees. Astral (talk) 22:54, 15 May 2012 (UTC)

But it is just a brownie with hash in it. You say as much yourself when you explain that "the added ingredient" (the hash) is exactly what gives it those effects. A miniature automobile, a fraudulent advertisement, and an alleged money-launderer are quite different from a standard automobile, advertisement, and money-launderer, respectively, but these differences do not mean that all of those are idioms. —Ruakh_TALK 23:13, 15 May 2012 (UTC)

If "hash brownie" is deemed SoP, it follows that so are a lot of other foods: carrot cake (simply cake with carrots in it), pea soup (simply soup made with peas), fruit salad (simply salad made with fruit), clam chowder (simply chowder made with clams), etc.

Food is kind of a special case. "Green beer" would be SoP if used to refer to the St. Patrick's Day staple: regular beer with green food colouring added. In that case, it's still regular beer — all that has changed is its colour. But it would be different if "green beer" were used to refer to a special variety of beer which got its colour from having spinach juice added to it (for whatever reason) during the brewing process. The addition of a new ingredient — especially a novel or atypical one — fundamentally changes the nature of a food or beverage. Astral (talk) 00:15, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

Delete. This is of a piece with "pot brownie", "marijuana brownie", "hash cookie", "hash cake", etc. —Ruakh_TALK 22:52, 15 May 2012 (UTC)

Look more carefully - a "hash cake" is a very different concept, and generally not a cake containing marijuana at all. This is exactly why we need to define hash brownie here, to distinguish it from phrases like hash cake that use a meaning of the word "hash" that related to cooking. Otherwise it would be quite odd to discover a recipe for hash cake in the Baptist Ladies Cook Book. bd2412 T 13:33, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

@BD2412: I did look carefully, and I saw both types. The very first page of results has two hits (one · two) where it does mean "cake containing hashish". And I think that's exactly why we don't need to define "hash cake" or "hash brownie" here: they mean "hash" + "cake" or "brownie", in whatever sense the speaker happens to have in mind, with no lexical restrictions. —Ruakh_TALK 13:59, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

There are other senses of "hash" that are never used with respect to either confection. For hash cake (although the cooking style seems to get many times as much use), there is something of a chronological distinction, with earlier references (say, pre-1980s) referring only to the cooking style. That by itself may be reason enough to have an entry for hash cake, because it means something markedly different over time, and this difference in meaning can cause confusion. Imagine a stoner's reaction to hearing that his grandmother is making a "hash cake", and imagine what his grandmother would make if he requested a "hash brownie" instead. bd2412 T 14:41, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

But the confusion there is solely because the stoner and the grandmother are thinking of different senses of "hash". That certainly sounds like a good reason to have an entry for hash — and oh, look, we do — but I don't see what's special about the two words "hash cake"? (By the way, your stereotypes may be obsolete; this New York Times article mentions a study that found, among other things, "The rate for people ages 50 to 65 who said they smoke marijuana was nearly 4 percent", though the numbers did drop off with increasing age.) —Ruakh_TALK 16:54, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

Doesn't that mean that the rate for people ages 50 to 65 who don't smoke marijuana is over 96%? I think that 96% of people within a group behaving a certain way is a good basis for a "stereotype" that people in that group behave that way. It has also been observed in recent posts in this discussion that "hash" and "marijuana" are not even the same thing, meaning that these are not merely different senses of "hash"; a "hash cake" or a "hash brownie" that contains marijuana instead of actual hashish is idiomatic. bd2412 T 17:59, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

Re: 96%: Sorry, you don't need to get defensive; I was just trying to inject some levity, and didn't intend that as a serious argument. The fact that some older folks do use marijuana obviously doesn't remove the possibility for confusion. It just means that 4% of grandmas think you're making too many assumptions about their role in society. :-P   Re: "'hash' and 'marijuana' are not even the same thing": If there are people who refer to a brownie without hashish in it as a "hash brownie", then presumably those people do use "hash" to mean "marijuana". No? —Ruakh_TALK 18:11, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

I can't say that I know for certain, but I don't think people generally refer to marijuana as "hash" in the United States. It may crop up, but infrequently compared to the myriad of more common names - pot, weed, ganja, herb, mary jane, sticky buds, etc. It seems to me that "hash brownie" is an imported term from countries where hashish is actually used. bd2412 T 18:40, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

As I said above (you know, up there... somewhere), I think hash brownie is a deliberate play on the prosaic and ordinary nature of hash browns, to the point that the distinction between pot and hashish is ignored in order to make it work Chuck Entz (talk) 06:30, 18 May 2012 (UTC)

• Keep. Marijuana brownie would be SOP, but "hash" has many other meanings that could apply to a brownie (including the food sense used in the very similar phrase, hash browns). The same should apply to pot brownie, as it is not a brownie cooked in a pot. bd2412 T 01:17, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

Delete. From the CFI:

“For example, bank has several senses and parking lot has an idiomatic sense of "large traffic jam". However bank parking lot can't possibly mean "to put a large traffic jam in a financial institution". With such clearly wrong interpretations weeded out, the remaining choices are "place to park cars for any of several kinds of business" or "place to park cars by, for or on a river bank or similar (as opposed to, say, the hill parking lot)." The whole phrase could plausibly mean either, depending on context (though the first is likely far more common), and so the phrase is not idiomatic.”

Ungoliant MMDCCLXIV 02:08, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

Inapplicable to this phrase, because the modifying phrase (hash) is not the primary food-related meaning. The "bank parking lot" example is clearly referring to something else, where the primary meaning of "parking lot" is the one that is SOP when combined with "bank"; here the primary meaning of "hash" would lead someone to think that a hash brownie was the same kind of hash as in hash browns. bd2412 T 03:23, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

I disagree. With the same reasoning we should have words like mile-long march, because you can’t tell whether it’s referring to the imperial or Roman mile. The last phrase of that CFI paragraph “The whole phrase could plausibly mean either, depending on context (though the first is likely far more common), and so the phrase is not idiomatic.” explains exactly why I think hash brownie isn’t idiomatic. Ungoliant MMDCCLXIV 22:50, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

Comment. SoP debate aside, I've found this also occurs as hashbrownie, so it should now pass the COALMINE test. Astral (talk) 03:57, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

Keep. Not obvious SoP due to multiple senses, there's a big difference from the similar hash brown, and as above, the coalmine test.--Dmol (talk) 07:47, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

If, as suggested above, this is not a term used in the States, then keep on grounds of UK idiomaticity. Ƿidsiþ 08:07, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

@BD2412, Widsith, so any combination of the word 'hash' and any other word(s) should be kept, as hash has more than one meaning? Mglovesfun (talk) 10:59, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

What? No. Ƿidsiþ 17:15, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

This expression appears twice in COCA not at all in BNC. I don't know how to do geography-specifying searches on the new News interface, which would be a serious loss for fact-based regional usage determination. DCDuring TALK 12:48, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

@Mglovesfun, that's really not what I said here. If it was "hashed eggs" or "tomato hash" (both of which are well attested), this wouldn't be an issue because the reader would correctly assume that it is the expected, food-related meaning of hash, that of ingredients being coarsely chopped and mixed together. In theory one could use the phrase "hash brownie" to describe a brownie with a filling cooked in the "hash" cooking style - and in fact there is such a thing as a "hash cake", which is a cake with a filling made in the "hash" cooking style, and not containing marijuana at all. That is exactly why we need to define "hash brownie", because the phrase is never used to mean a brownie cooked in the hash style. bd2412 T 13:29, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

Anything's hypothetically possible. If you can find an actual example of someone thinking hash brownie means 'a brownie with a filling cooked in the "hash" cooking style' then you'd have a real point, instead of a hypothetical one. I do get rather annoyed by the 'someone who may not exist, may never have existed, and may never exist in the future could perhaps get this wrong'. Mglovesfun (talk) 18:40, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

That is no objection. You're involved with writing a dictionary that defines words like "and" and "the", which would be pointless to define if we were only offering definitions for people who had absolutely no idea what the meaning of a word was. bd2412 T 18:45, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

Of course it's an objection, I'm saying provide evidence instead of making unsupported claims. Mglovesfun (talk) 18:47, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

Do you want evidence that a brownie is a food? Or that "hash" is a term widely used with foods to refer to a particular style of cooking? For the latter I can provide plenty. [1], [2], [3], [4]. I don't need to commission a survey to demonstrate that the likely association people will have between "hash" and a food item is the food-related sense of the word. bd2412 T 18:55, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

@Mglovesfun It would seem equally fair to expect evidence establishing that most people can immediately pick up this term's meaning from its parts. I don't think it's appropriate to simply take SoP-ness for granted here. I can see people unfamiliar with the cannabis-related sense of "hash" taking a "hash brownie" to be some type of hash brown (I seem to remember going through such confusion myself, actually). Astral (talk) 19:49, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

People unfamiliar with the cannabis-related sense of "hash" are irrelevant. Their failure to understand "hash brownie" has nothing to do with "hash brownie" and everything to do with "hash". —Ruakh_TALK 20:14, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

People unfamiliar with particular terms are very relevant. The core reason for the existence of dictionaries is to give people a tool which enables them to understand terms they don't already understand. Astral (talk) 22:25, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

Do you sincerely not understand what I was saying, or are you just messing with me? —Ruakh_TALK 22:42, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

There is a difference between not understanding something that is said, and not agreeing with it. Also please be mindful of your tone. Astral (talk) 23:07, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

I am well aware of that difference; that's why I wrote "understand" rather than "agree with". Your reply above (the one beginning "People unfamiliar with particular terms") either demonstrates a total failure to understand the comment it was replying to, or else is patently disingenuous. The latter seems infinitely more likely; I entertain the former possibility only in deference to WT:AGF. —Ruakh_TALK 23:41, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

I'm unsure what I could've done/said that lead you to conclude I'm "messing with [you]" and being "patently disingenuous," or how to respond to such an assessment. Astral (talk) 00:08, 17 May 2012 (UTC)

Then maybe I'm just tired and irritable and need more sleep. Please forgive me; hopefully I'll come back in the morning and see this discussion differently. —Ruakh_TALK 01:05, 17 May 2012 (UTC)

'To paraphrase, can you actually find evidence of something thinking that a hash brownie means 'a brownie with a filling cooked in the "hash" cooking style'. Now you and Astral are saying it's possible, I'm not happy with just 'possible' as anything's possible, I'm looking for actual examples of people making this mistake. Keeping entries in order to cater to hypothetical users who may not exist seems likes a bad idea to me. I could create a hypothetical user in my mind who doesn't understand my name is John, but that's not a reason to keep my name is John. Basically I'm saying 'prove it'. Mglovesfun (talk) 20:20, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

What about evidence demonstrating this term's SoP-ness? That people easily grasp its full meaning simply from its parts? This doesn't strike me as a term that has an obviousness level on par with "plastic bag" or "cardboard box" (it certainly wasn't something I immediately understood when I first encountered it), and don't think its SoP-ness should be taken for granted. Unless we undertake some type of study to obtain hard data on people's familiarity with and understanding of this term (which we obviously don't have the resources to do, and would be silly anyway), most of the arguments laid out here are going to fall in the realm of hypothesis. I think it's as incumbent upon those who deem this term SoP to demonstrate why they think it's SoP as it for those who think it's not SoP to demonstrate why they've arrived at their conclusion. To simply argue "It's SoP" or "It's not SoP" is to presume that one's premise is correct and cannot be disputed. Astral (talk) 22:25, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

Ignoring the issue on whether the term's SoP or not, it has to be kept due to the WT:COALMINE rule. It's sad, but that's the rules. -- Liliana • 17:21, 17 May 2012 (UTC)

• I don't think that's sad at all. WT:COALMINE exists because it indicates multi-word phrases that are so likely to be thought of as a single word that they have come to be written that way. bd2412 T 23:31, 17 May 2012 (UTC)