poke

[prettygoodword]

poke or poké (POH-kay, poh-KAY) - n., a Hawaiian salad of cubed raw fish that is marinated in soy sauce and sesame oil then mixed with diced onions, sesame seeds, ginger, and the like.


Weirdly, most dictionaries have only one or the other of those pronunciations, with a decided mix on where to place the stress. FWIW I usually hear people say POH-keh. Traditionally made with yellowfin tuna, but as with sushi rolls, new variations, including what gets mixed in, are constantly being invented. From Hawaiian poke, to slice crosswise/a piece, and the one pronunciation I found for that stressed the first syllable.

ETA: A little more poking about suggests (without rigorous evidence) that the poh-KAY pronunciation may come from the poké spelling, where the accent meant to indicate "pronounce this vowel (that's normally silent)" is misread as "stress this vowel."

---L.

Comments

[jesse_the_k]

It's POH-kay around here as well, 1000 miles from an ocean, so what do we know

[prettygoodword]

🤷🏽

[full_metal_ox]

POH-kay from here on the Gulf Coast of Florida (where it’s become commonplace supermarket deli fare.)

A little more poking about suggests (without rigorous evidence) that the poh-KAY pronunciation may come from the poké spelling, where the accent meant to indicate "pronounce this vowel (that's normally silent)" is misread as "stress this vowel."

To distinguish the word from the sort of poke (silent E) wherein market goods, notably pigs, would be carried?

[prettygoodword]

Yup.

That sense of poke, btw, is an obsolete dialect word meaning a bag, which has survived in that phrase and an underworld slang sense of a wallet (which goes back to when wallets were drawstring bags).

[loup_noir]

And here, if you say poke-e or pok-ay, they stare at you and eventually say, "Oh, you want the poke bowl." Which I usually do, of course.

[prettygoodword]

🙄