Danbooru

Biscuit tag: American or British?

Posted under General

I noticed the biscuit tag while reorganizing the Tag group:Food tags, and I decided to have a look at it.

It seems like the images I looked at were split between the American definition of the word and the British definition of the word. Muddying the waters further, "biscuit" is used for both purposes in Japan, primarily as a form of cookie but also in the form of the biscuits (with a hole in them to put honey in) seen at KFC.

The tally was American 13-32 British, counting 3 deleted images and removing a mistagged macaron and a mistagged senbei. Most of the American biscuits came from the character bisuke-tan.

Naturally, there is no Wiki definition for it.

If we prefer to use the British version, then is there a good way of distinguishing a biscuit from any other type of cookie? And what should the American-style biscuit be tagged as instead?

Updated by Serlo

I'd vote for using the American definition of it, with a note about this in the wiki directing to cookie. If the definitions are correct, using the British definition would make the biscuit tag redundant to the cookie tag.

Edit: Just throwing out some options if for some reason there is a need to keep both concepts with the name biscuit. The American defined one could be tagged as "american_biscuit," or we could tag the UK one as "tea_biscuit."

Updated

It's hard for me to say, not being British, but I'm not sure there's anything in a Google Image search for 'tea biscuit' I wouldn't tag as either a cookie or a cracker depending on its shape (crackers should be salty rather than sweet, but you can't tell that visually). The ones that look like English muffins are close enough to American biscuits that I'd just label them that.

A macaron is always a cookie in my mind.

I don't have a particular problem with tea biscuit, but I don't think I'd ever find a situation I'd use it or query for it.

I'd just alias the two together. Use cookie for what the UK calls a biscuit, use muffin_(english) for what the UK calls a muffin and use cupcake for what the UK calls a muffin.

The food tags are indeed quite messed up. Terminology for food varies wildly from region to region. The same name is used for different foods or different groups, not everyone has heard of the same foods and translated names are often confusing too.

Updated

Necrobumping this topic because I think it's overdue for a revisit. As most of the forum regulars are no doubt aware, we can't reasonably expect taggers to read the wiki for every single tag they use, and biscuit is no exception. It's no surprise that most Commonwealth users of this site instinctively use this tag for what they expect it to mean, with predictably messy results.

Rather than continually clean up biscuit, wouldn't it be better to turn its wiki into a disambiguation page and use a less ambiguous tag for the North American food? Wikpedia uses Biscuit (bread) as the title of its page and I think that following this example would go a long way toward keeping all the foods known as "biscuits" neatly sorted.

iridescent_slime said:

Rather than continually clean up biscuit, wouldn't it be better to turn its wiki into a disambiguation page and use a less ambiguous tag for the North American food? Wikpedia uses Biscuit (bread) as the title of its page and I think that following this example would go a long way toward keeping all the foods known as "biscuits" neatly sorted.

+1

BrokenEagle98 said:

Are there any other common UK -> US terminology that we need to clean up as well?

chips french_fries - Not sure why we need chips when we have potato chips and the chips wiki says they’re made of potatoes.
curtains (BE) vs. drape (AE)
frying_pan (BE) vs. skillet (AE)
garden (BE) vs. (back)yard (AE)
holiday (BE) vs. vacation (AE) - holiday seems like a useless super-tag for christmas and valentine day.
jelly (AE) - The wiki even says that it’s ambiguous, yet it’s tagged on 39 posts.
jug (BE, container) vs. pitcher (AE container or sports player)
lift (BE) vs. elevator (AE) - lift is also used by some users for various *_lift things.
pavement (BE) vs. sidewalk (AE)
plait (BE) should be the same as braid (AE), but plait seems to be used inconsistently. Maybe sometimes confused with pleated_skirt?
tap (BE) vs. faucet (AE) - Only 4 tap posts, but I see faucets only in two?
tin (BE) vs. can (AE) - Only 4 tin posts.
torch (BE flashlight, fire on a wooden stick) vs. flashlight (AE) - torch looks pretty clean at cursory glance.
wellington (BE) vs. rubber_boots (AE) - Only 4 wellington posts, though.

I used this list of BE vs. AE terms, btw.

There's grey -> gray, though admittedly that one really isn't problematic.

BE “grey” seems to be used pretty consistently for all tags that aren’t names.

Updated

kittey said:

chips french_fries - Not sure why we need chips when we have potato chips and the chips wiki says they’re made of potatoes.
curtains (BE) vs. drape (AE)
frying_pan (BE) vs. skillet (AE)
garden (BE) vs. (back)yard (AE)
holiday (BE) vs. vacation (AE) - holiday seems like a useless super-tag for christmas and valentine day.
jelly (AE) - The wiki even says that it’s ambiguous, yet it’s tagged on 39 posts.
jug (BE, container) vs. pitcher (AE container or sports player)
lift (BE) vs. elevator (AE) - lift is also used by some users for various *_lift things.
pavement (BE) vs. sidewalk (AE)
plait (BE) should be the same as braid (AE), but plait seems to be used inconsistently. Maybe sometimes confused with pleated_skirt?
tap (BE) vs. faucet (AE) - Only 4 tap posts, but I see faucets only in two?
tin (BE) vs. can (AE) - Only 4 tin posts.
torch (BE flashlight, fire on a wooden stick) vs. flashlight (AE) - torch looks pretty clean at cursory glance.
wellington (BE) vs. rubber_boots (AE) - Only 4 wellington posts, though.

I used this list of BE vs. AE terms, btw.

BE “grey” seems to be used pretty consistently for all tags that aren’t names.

My view on these:

chips is a bad tag as it could be (what the British would call) crisps, (what the Americans would call) fries, betting chips, fragments of rock, etc... That one should be turned into a disambig tag as well.
Most BE speakers would have no idea what a skillet is and would never think to use it. Is it true the other way round? One should probably be aliased to the other either way.
garden encompasses more than just back yards, and is more inherently identifiable in pictures than back yards would be. Thus garden is the better tag.
I can't see anything in either holiday or vacation that justifies the existance of either tag.
jelly should be nuked.
pitcher is ambiguous as identified above, thus jug is better.
lift is ambiguous as identified above, thus elevator is better.
The pavement one is another awkward one where the tag is used for something different to the BE term, but many of the tagging is done by people unaware of this. Probably it should be made into a disambiguation but I'm not sure what the current official use of the tag should be put to.
I've no idea what the tagger(s) thought when adding those plait tags - most of them not only aren't plaits but aren't plaid or pleats either.
Tap is ambiguous, as is Tin. Nuke both in favour of the AE terms.
If torch/flashlight are doing fine as they are, leave as they are. Kind of surprising, though - flashlight isn't a term BE speakers would be familiar with usually, and before I used this site I used to think "flashlight" was US English for lighthouse, not "electric torch"...
Most uses of the drape tag are for clothing, not curtains. Drape is very ambiguous whereas curtains are not at all, ergo curtains is the better tag.
The meaning of rubber boot is obvious, whereas "wellington" or "wellies" wouldn't be to someone not familiar with it (the former could also be ambiguous). Stick with rubber boot. The low use of the BE term is almost certainly because wellingtons is aliased to rubber boot, as it should be.

Oh and +1 to iridescent_slime's proposal above, too. Less ambiguity is always good.

kittey said:

chips french_fries - Not sure why we need chips when we have potato chips and the chips wiki says they’re made of potatoes.
curtains (BE) vs. drape (AE)
frying_pan (BE) vs. skillet (AE)
garden (BE) vs. (back)yard (AE)
holiday (BE) vs. vacation (AE) - holiday seems like a useless super-tag for christmas and valentine day.
jelly (AE) - The wiki even says that it’s ambiguous, yet it’s tagged on 39 posts.
jug (BE, container) vs. pitcher (AE container or sports player)
lift (BE) vs. elevator (AE) - lift is also used by some users for various *_lift things.
pavement (BE) vs. sidewalk (AE)
plait (BE) should be the same as braid (AE), but plait seems to be used inconsistently. Maybe sometimes confused with pleated_skirt?
tap (BE) vs. faucet (AE) - Only 4 tap posts, but I see faucets only in two?
tin (BE) vs. can (AE) - Only 4 tin posts.
torch (BE flashlight, fire on a wooden stick) vs. flashlight (AE) - torch looks pretty clean at cursory glance.
wellington (BE) vs. rubber_boots (AE) - Only 4 wellington posts, though.

I used this list of BE vs. AE terms, btw.

BE “grey” seems to be used pretty consistently for all tags that aren’t names.

My view on these:

chips is a bad tag as it could be (what the British would call) crisps, (what the Americans would call) fries, betting chips, fragments of rock, etc... That one should be turned into a disambig tag as well.
Most BE speakers would have no idea what a skillet is and would never think to use it. Is it true the other way round? One should probably be aliased to the other either way. Edit: Given that US dictionaries not only include definitions of "frying pan" but Merriam Webster even goes so far as to direct people looking for skillet to the frying pan page, my vote goes for frying pan as the better tag.
garden encompasses more than just back yards, and is more inherently identifiable in pictures than back yards would be. Thus garden is the better tag.
I can't see anything in either holiday or vacation that justifies the existance of either tag.
jelly should be nuked.
pitcher is ambiguous as identified above, thus jug is better.
lift is ambiguous as identified above, thus elevator is better.
The pavement one is another awkward one where the tag is used for something different to the BE term, but many of the tagging is done by people unaware of this. Probably it should be made into a disambiguation but I'm not sure what the current official use of the tag should be put to.
I've no idea what the tagger(s) thought when adding those plait tags - most of them not only aren't plaits but aren't plaid or pleats either.
Tap is ambiguous, as is Tin. Nuke both in favour of the AE terms.
If torch/flashlight are doing fine as they are, leave as they are. Kind of surprising, though - flashlight isn't a term BE speakers would be familiar with usually, and before I used this site I used to think "flashlight" was US English for lighthouse, not "electric torch"...
Most uses of the drape tag are for clothing, not curtains. Drape is very ambiguous whereas curtains are not at all, ergo curtains is the better tag.
The meaning of rubber boot is obvious, whereas "wellington" or "wellies" wouldn't be to someone not familiar with it (the former could also be ambiguous). Stick with rubber boot. The low use of the BE term is almost certainly because wellingtons is aliased to rubber boot, as it should be.

Oh and +1 to iridescent_slime's proposal above, too. Less ambiguity is always good.

Updated

This BE/AE discussion should probably be split off into a thread of its own, but I'll weigh in anyway:

  • The AE chips refers to far more than just potato chips — corn chips and tortilla chips are particularly popular — though I'm not sure that any of these non-potato-based snacks are common enough in anime art to be worthy of a tag. Note that the Bugles wiki describes this product as a type of chip as well, though this isn't something I'd be inclined to agree with.
  • Drapes is already aliased to curtains. The words drape and drapes seem to be going out of style.
  • Frying pan is more common than skillet in all the places I've been, so maybe it's a regional term? Skillet is a word I hardly ever see outside of rustic cookbooks or home-style restaurant menus.
  • Holiday is completely pointless. Vacation is mostly just beach selfies, though there are a few posts there with a "going on a long trip" theme that could be merged with the travel tag.
  • I began to clean up the jelly tag at the time I created the wiki, but there were posts that used the tag for other types of jelly (like agar or konjac) and I wasn't prepared to make up new tags for those. I agree that the tag should still be nuked, though.
  • What's the BE term for a large bottle with a handle and a narrow mouth, if not jug? How do you distinguish containers like these from these? My curiosity is genuine.
  • I've stopped using the pavement tag altogether as I honestly have no idea what the point of it is. The wiki doesn't conform to either the AE or BE definition, as far as I can tell. FYI, the AE use of pavement is for any road paving material — asphalt, brick, concrete, etc. — and it certainly isn't limited to "stones arranged to form the surface". I'm not sure whether this is actually useful as a tag.

Regarding the original topic, I've created and populated biscuit (bread). North American biscuits were a surprisingly small fraction of the biscuit tag; it was pretty badly cluttered, not just with things that should have been tagged cookie, but things that should have been tagged with wafer or toppo or even senbei.

I'm going to take a break for a while but if anyone else wants to take a look at what's left, that would be appreciated. I'm not quite sure what to make of snacks like the ones in post #995036 or post #2279523 or post #3199464 — they look more like a cracker to my eyes, so any biscuit expertise would be especially helpful. I'll try to finish what's left of them tomorrow.

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