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Comment by dabluecaboose | Hacker News Reader

>But nobody in their right mind is picking something rancid. Nor would a supermarket ever sell it.

>So I can't tell if the author doesn't know what rancid actually means, or if there's some separate food science definition of rancid that is different from everyday use

More likely is that the average person doesn't know what rancid actually means in this context. Rancidity is a quality of oil that occurs when exposure to oxygen results in the existence of free radicals in the oil.

By and large, Americans actually prefer the taste of rancid olive oil.

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> More likely is that the average person doesn't know what rancid actually means.

That's tautologically impossible. A word means exactly what most native speakers of the language believe it means.

And "rancid" means "smelling or tasting unpleasant as a result of being old and stale" or "rank in taste or smell" or "having an unpleasant smell or taste usually from chemical change or decomposition."

https://www.google.com/search?q=define+rancid

https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/rancid

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/rancid

If "Americans actually prefer the taste," then it isn't "rancid" in American Standard English.

>A word means exactly what most native speakers of the language believe it means.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rancidification

...except when it doesn't.

Is it so hard to understand that words can have different meanings in different circumstances? Context matters, words don't have one universal definition.

But this is an article intended for general readership, so it should use words as they are understood by general readers, or else point out that it is using a word in a non-general sense.

You're right that context matters. Which is precisely why this article is badly and misleadingly written, if the authors are ignoring the context of an average reader.

This isn't a food science journal for scientists, after all.

Fair enough, given the amount of confusion in the comments here it's clear that at the very least they should have explained the difference between rancidity in oils and the colloquial definition.

But most English speakers (IFAIK, I'm not native) use rancid as "spoiled" only for a group of produce, like oil or butter that went through rancidification process. So it's more like word rancid has more common meaning (being unpleasant) and more scientific and less commonly used one (went through rancidification).

Then it's a clickbait title.

Communicating badly and then acting smug when misunderstood is not cleverness.

https://xkcd.com/169/

That just sounds like some food experts have chosen to use the word "rancid" for a technical measure which is actually at odds with the meaning of the word in common usage. This is a common behaviour of experts, but it's patronising and doesn't really help anyone.

I don't know the etymology, but I think it's more likely that the colloquial definition of "rancid" evolved from the condition of rancidity in other oils, such as animal fats, that render them unpleasant and smelly, as opposed to just tasting different (as in the case of olive oil).

Like technical experts like to be precise but I’m failing to see how their use of rancid is not a synonym for oxidized

Yes, the unsaturated portion of the oil is most subject to oxidation from the environment, like from the oxygen in the air which acts more rapidly at warm storage temperatures than cold storage.

The expert odor committees are condemning oils that have an amount of oxidation that is so low it is hard for them to all agree so their consensus is the most accurate overall judgement.

Ordinary chefs are not likely to even notice such a slight amount of degradation.

This is a far cry from highly oxidized cooking oil like you sometimes have in fast-food operations who wait until it's long overdue to replace the oil in their fryers. This can often be so rancid you can smell it from quite a distance, anyone can agree about it, and any oil which is only a small fraction as bad doesn't earn the qualification as "rancid" by ordinary people.

And plenty of them go back for second helpings anyway.

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