Pylimitics

It’s common enough, particularly in New England, to eat some chowder — especially clam chowder. But why is it clam “chowder” instead of, for example, clam “soup” or clam “stew”? And if you do try some chowder and it isn’t any good, are you likely to chowter about it?

“Chowder” is just a variety of soup or stew, and it seems to be associated with clams just sort of by accident. The word appeared in the mid 1700s in northeastern North America, and in 1859 was described in the Dictionary of Americanisms as “a favorite dish in New England, made of fish, pork, onions, and biscuit stewed together.” The word “chowder” comes from the French word “chaudiére,” which is a pot or cauldron. 

There’s an old insult-word “chowderhead,” meaning a dunce, but it doesn’t seem to be related to clams, chowder, or even the pots you cook them in. Instead it’s apparently derived from “cholter-head”, which meant the same thing back in the 1500s. “Cholter-head” came from the even earlier “jolthead,” but nobody knows where that word came from. 

As for “chowtering” about bad chowder, to “chowter” is to grumble or whine like a child. It can also mean the sounds frogs make. It seems to have come from “chower,” which came from the even earlier “jower,” both of which meant the same thing. So “chowder,” “chowter,” and “chowderhead” aren’t really related to one another — but it’s an interesting coincidence that both “chowter” and “chowderhead” have family trees that both include a change from “j-” words to “ch-” words. That might be a change in pronunciation over the centuries, or it might just be the spelling. Since it’s so hard to find a usable audio tape from the 1500s, we really don’t know how it sounded back then to be called a “cholter-head,, nor how it sounded if you jowered about it later. Probably just as well; we have plenty of insults and complaining to deal with as it is.