mystery meat
4
7.3
- noun
- /ˈmɪstəri mit/
- Informal
:
carne misteriosa
- Mom's mystery meat loaf.
First, I want to try out this, this mystery meat, beef, noodles.
- First, I want to try out this, this mystery meat, beef, noodles.
- So you know, the thing about mystery meat is it tastes best with a grain of salt.
- Some days and then on other days it was a fried piece of mystery meat.
- All right, so we have our mystery meats and our shrimps and I believe egg right now.
Examples
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At the school cafeteria, we always jokingly referred to the unknown dish as mystery meat.
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After eating that questionable burger from the fast-food joint, he realized it was definitely mystery meat.
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Perhaps they will bring you the mystery meat
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Looks like we have mystery meat for the mystery round Spanish.
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I am scared of eating raw here; it is all "mystery meat."
Blog text (11) -
So you know, the thing about mystery meat is it tastes best with a grain of salt.
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This is mystery meat, AKA baloney.
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On Independence Square, microwave hot dogs go for one to two hryvnia, and mystery meat burgers go for two and a half.
Fiction book (1999) -
The winner of tonight's mystery meat contest is Jeffrey Corbin, who guessed "some kind of beef."
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During lunch, many students hesitated to try the mystery meat served on their trays, unsure of its origin.
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning 'meat of unknown or doubtful origin' is directly and compositionally derived from 'mystery' (unknown/puzzling) + 'meat' (animal flesh), so a B1 learner who knows both words can infer the MWE's sense. This straightforward noun+noun combination and its literal logic are common cross-linguistically, making the expression transparent.
Etymology
The noun mystery meat may come from school or army cafeterias where cooks served slabs of meat people could not identify, so the dish was literally a mystery of meat. That's why 'mystery meat' now means meat of 'unknown origin' or 'low quality'.