the.com/mushy
The texture food and feelings collapse into when nobody's watching.
means Soft and pulpy to the point of losing its shape, or excessively sentimental and tender in an emotional way.
from Born from 'mush,' the thick cornmeal porridge whose name is likely a softened variant of 'mash' — that which has been crushed into a yielding pulp. The '-y' tacked on turns the stuff into a quality, and somewhere along the way the word slid from describing overcooked food to describing overcooked emotions, the kind that go soft and shapeless when love gets involved.
- origin
- From maize porridge mush, eaten before romance got soft
- banana physics
- Ripening enzymes literally digest the fruit's own cell walls
- brain effect
- Emotion floods the same reward circuits as sugar
- language
- Became slang for sentimental only in the 1800s
mushy peas — traditional british dish of marrowfat peas cooked until soft, served with fish and chips
mushy brains disease — chronic wasting disease affecting elk and deer in western north america since 1967