Scrod

Scrod (also schrod) is a young (2.5 lb (1.1 kg) or less) cod or, less frequently, haddock, split and boned. It is a staple in many coastal New England and Atlantic Canada seafood and fish markets.

A dubious folk etymology holds that the term comes from the acronym "Small Cod Remaining On Dock", but it more likely comes from the obsolete Dutch schrood, piece cut off, or from scrawed, from Cornish dialect.

Others argue the term comes from either a sign on a wharf in Boston or a restaurant that advertised this kind of generic whitefish as "Special Catch Recorded (sometimes 'Right') On Day."

Others still say that the term was coined by Guy Perry, the maître' d for many years at the Parker House Hotel in Boston, to describe the hotel restaurant's "fresh catch" even before the chef returned from the fish market.

In fiction

In Gary Shteyngart's novel Absurdistan, a rebel organization is known as the State Committee for the Restoration of Order and Democracy (SCRODUM). The protagonist wonders why they would have named their group after a "bad fish".

In an episode of The Simpsons, the family visits a seaside town known as "America's Scrod Basket". When Bart protests that he thought Springfield (the Simpsons' hometown) was America's scrod basket, his mother Marge responds peevishly, "no — Springfield is America's crud bucket, at least according to Newsweek."

In Good Will Hunting, a 1997 film directed by Gus Van Sant, the scrod is used by the protagonist, William Hunting, as a reason for not wanting to join the National Security Agency. Specifically, he says that owing to an oil rig accident by a drunken sailor playing slalom in the North Atlantic, all sea life will be destroyed, leaving a soldier that was sent to war because of Will's code-breaking skill to be left to eat scrod and oil.

In an episode of Newsradio, the character Lisa Miller, after unintentionally reacquiring her long-suppressed Boston accent, says "Next thing I know I'm back at the chowder house, serving scrod to those jerks from Harvard".

In Joseph Heller's novel Catch-22 the character Orr was an "..eccentric midget, a freakish, likable dwarf......and was not afraid of dogs or cats or beetles or moths, or of foods like scrod and tripe."

In Hocus Pocus, after the three Sanderson sisters chase down Max (Omri Katz), Dani (Thora Birch), Allison (Vinessa Shaw), and Binx (voiced by Jason Marsden) into the back alley of a seafood restaurant, the sister whose power is smelling children, Mary, played by Kathy Najimy, says, "I smell scrod. It's a bottom dweller. You can eat it sometimes with lovely bread crumbs, a little bit of margarine, or olive oil is good."

Scrod/pluperfect joke

A grammatical joke involving scrod often goes like this:

A businessman arriving in Boston for a convention found that his first evening was free, and he decided to go find a good seafood restaurant that served scrod, a Massachusetts specialty. Getting into a taxi, he asked the cab driver, "Do you know where a guy can get scrod around here?" "Sure," said the cabdriver. "I know a few places... but I can tell you it's not often I hear someone use the third-person pluperfect indicative anymore!"

There is another version of the joke that may arguably come closer to the ridiculously hilarious claim to be a grammatical reference:

There is this guy from Boston that is visiting Galveston, and while walking alone along the beach he is suddenly struck with a desire for a plate of steaming scrod--a favorite fish dish in Boston. He walks up to a cabby and taps on the window. He asks the cabby, "Sir, if a man might wish to get scrod around here, where might he go?" The cabby says, "You know, I've been asked that question a hundred times, but never in the pluperfect subjunctive."

Contrary to the joke, however, "scrod" is not the pluperfect of "screw." The "third-person pluperfect indicative", though a legitimate grammatical construction ("he had gone" is the corresponding part of the verb "to go"), is used in the joke for humorous effect only; the structure of the given sentence would not support its use.

(Minor note: I get scrod would be passive, not indicative, which is I screw. The joke travels among linguists as "I've never heard it in the pluperfect subjunctive before." Compare Harper's version referenced in footnote 2, "passive pluperfect subjunctive." Second, the "structure," if that means syntax, does indeed support the joke--the verb is exactly where it's supposed to be. Moreover, the demotic idiom I got screwed as opposed to less demotic but equally idiomatic "I was screwed" is being invoked here. Finally, the joke plays on the English strong verb, in which a root vowel undergoes ablaut: think-thought, speak-spoke, etc. The e-o variation in the joke (screw-scrod) can be seen in speak-spoke, bear-bore, wear-wore. English speakers are so familiar with this particular ablaut series that the joke works.)

References

• Pluperfect? (scrod), discussion at Englishforums.com