Language: dip v. spread

[Fat Guy]

Why do so many people use spread to mean dip, and dip to mean spread? It seems to me that it should be self-evident -- tautological, even -- that a spread is something you spread on something else, and a dip is something you dip something else in to. So why do I so often see the term dip used to describe a spread like hummus, etc.?

[jgarner53]

why do I so often see the term dip used to describe a spread like hummus, etc.?

Because many people serve hummus as a dip (in fact, I would consider it a dip more from my personal use/experience with it than a spread).

Thinking about dip vs. spread, in my own mind, I tend to see anything you can readily scoop with a spoon or that would be awkward to put on a knife falls into the dip category: french onion, guacamole, spinach dip, artichoke dip, clam dip, salsa. Spreads: butter, cream cheese, mayo, soft cheeses like chevre.

[Mikeb19]

Well, most dips taste good spread on things, and most spreads taste good when you dip things into them.

As for hummus, if I'm lazy I'll just find stuff to dip into it, or I'll spread it onto a pita for a sandwich.

[TAPrice]

I'd argue for hummus as a dip. When I go to a middle eastern restaurant, they always give me pita to dip into the hummus. I've never seen a patron carefully spread the hummus with a knife.

[Fat Guy]

Whether any given person specifically spreads it or dips it (though the act of picking up a puree with pita is often referred to specifically as "smearing"), it remains the case that both terms are used -- on menus, in cookbooks, in conversation -- to refer to the exact same thing, and often not in the context of its actual application.

[TAPrice]

I've never heard the term "smearing" used for hummus--or really anything else. At least not around here. Is this a New York or East coast term?

[TAPrice]

Whether any given person specifically spreads it or dips it (though the act of picking up a puree with pita is often referred to specifically as "smearing"), it remains the case that both terms are used -- on menus, in cookbooks, in conversation -- to refer to the exact same thing, and often not in the context of its actual application.

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Are the two terms widely used to refer to the exact same thing? Are they really interchangeable? Or, are they only interchangeable when referring to foods that can be both dipped and spread (e.g. hummus).

In my mind, "cheese dip" and "cheese spread" are two very different things. I can't imagine confusing the two. What other specific examples are you thinking about?

[tino27]

In my mind, if you can stick a spoon in it vertically and it doesn't fall over, it's a spread. Otherwise, it's a dip.

[Fat Guy]

I've heard dozens of items referred to interchangeably as dip or spread, including hummus, taramosalata, caponata, baba ganoush, skordalia . . .

I believe smear is an Israeli description of the typical way in which hummus is eaten, and at least around here (NYC) it's a mainstream term. The big companies that have been popularizing the creamy, Israeli style of hummus (most notably Sabra) have even designed their packaging to facilitate smearing -- thus the wide tubs with raised lids. It makes sense, since if you put hummus on a plate or in a wide, shallow bowl and then go after it with small pieces of pita you're not really dipping or spreading. You're smearing.

[Synergy]

I've never heard the term smearing, but that really does describe what you do with thick hummus. (I love Sabra, but it seems to have dissapeared in my local safeway).

I tend to use the term dip or spread just depending on what I am doing with the substance at the time, so things like baba and guac can be both.

Usually semantics and improper word usage get under my skin, but with the dip/spread debate, I don't really care, as long as it's gooey, tasty and good.

[MarketStEl]

Is that smear, or schmear, as in "a schmear of cream cheese" -- cream cheese clearly being a spread in its native form, but transformable into a dip through the addition of other ingredients, including liquids that thin its consistency?

Maybe the interchangeable use of "dip" and "spread" for the foods you describe, Fat Guy, might have something to do with their consistency: They are not so thick that a potato chip dipped in them would break (my standard for distinguishing "spread" from "dip"), but neither are they so thin that they would not stay on a knife used to apply them to slices of bread or the like.

You can spread dips on bread or crackers, and you can dip things like pretzels into peanut butter or (room temperature) cold pack cheese food, both of which I've usually heard referred to as spreads. But the set formed by the intersection of the sets "spread" and "dip", terminologically speaking, seems smaller than suggested in the original post.