Fascinating!

We went to a very swanky restaurant for our 20th anniversary, 15 years ago. It was so swanky...they had no idea what I was talking about when I mentioned Supersizing® or coupons.

But my entree was some sort of seafood commotion, served on a noodly bed of black linguini. The server, a sort of a supersized Gig Young type, asked me if I knew how they made the pasta black. I was going to say "a Sharpie®" but that seemed, I don't know, dumb, so I played along and let him tell me that the linguini was tinted with squid ink.

Now there's a little sea critter who must have awful anxiety attacks during his marine lifetime, however brief. I mean, he might wind up as "bait" in a bait shop, in a Dixie cup 1/2 full of dirt in a refrigerator bought from a scratch 'n' dent outlet. Or he might wind up as "calamari," and be a part of an appetizer in an Italian restaurant.

Interesting, though, that the word "calamari" has its roots in the same ground from where "calligraphy" comes...the former being that deep-fried dish, a favorite in antipasti everywhere you look, and the latter being that ornate pen-and-ink lettering. Here's some more info from Merriam-Webster's popular* Word of the Day feature.

The word "calamari" was borrowed into English from 17th-century Italian, where it functioned as the plural of "calamaro" or "calamaio." The Italian word, in turn, comes from the Medieval Latin noun "calamarium," meaning "ink pot" or "pen case," and can be ultimately traced back to Latin "calamus," meaning "reed pen." The transition from pens and ink to squid is not surprising, given the inky substance that a squid ejects and the long tapered shape of the squid's body. English speakers have also adopted "calamus" itself as a word referring to both a reed pen and to a number of plants.

* at least, with me!