I'm hearing the word melty used a lot in advertizing these days... Specifically as it is used to describe cheese.
Taco Bell has their "Cheesy Beefy Melt," which they describe as being filled with melty cheese. Pizza Hut uses the same term to describe the cheese inside their stuffed crust pizza.
Taco Bell and Pizza Hut are both owned by the same company (Pepsico), so I'm not terribly surprised that they both employ the same word in their ads. But I also heard it used in another ad, and although I don't recall what it was for, I don't think it was from the same parent company.
Why melty? I suppose "melted" cheese connotes something in more of a liquid state. Perhaps consumers find it off-putting. Perhaps melted is not an accurate way to describe cheese that is soft and stretchy, but still clinging to some vestige of solidness. Melted=fondue; melty=pizza cheese.
The Onion did a nice story on this a year and a half ago. Clearly, I'm not the first to notice that this word has crept into pop culture usage. People have been using it for years, but now it's... official. Businesses are intentionally using it with pride to desribe their products. Marketing experts are sitting around a table, tossing around words, and they decide that the best way to provide an accurate word picture of the cheese in their product is to invent a new word -- melty. Instantly, the consumer knows exactly what to expect from the prduct.
The first time I hard the term, it was used to describe a cassette tape (yes, it was that long ago) that had been playing continuously in a car tape player for several hours. It was a while before I came to accept it as a way to describe food. I like it, but I don't like it. But no matter what, I do like melty cheese. Melty chocolate, not so much. Melty underwear? I don't think so.
Posted by podge at April 4, 2008 10:23 PM | TrackBack