Scrod

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Scrod (or schrod) is a generic term for a young (2.5-lb 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 [or Haddock] Remaining On Dock", but it more likely comes from the obsolete Dutch schrood, piece cut off. Another dubious folk etymology holds that "scrod" is cod and "schrod" is haddock.^[1]

Others claim 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."^{[citation needed]}

Others still claim 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.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] In Fiction

In Gary Shteyngart's novel Absurdistan, a rebel organization is known as the State Committee for the Restoration of Order and Democracy (SCROD). 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 as a hypothetical reason proposed by the protagonist, William Hunting, as a derived reason for not wanting to join the National Security Agency. Specifically, he says that owing to an oil rig accident driven 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."

[edit] 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 I 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!"

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.