“Fending,” &c.

Roz Chast catalogs words for opening the refrigerator and having whatever for dinner. In her household it’s called “fending.” Among the other terms she’s collected: “California plate,” “spa plate,” and “eek.”

My favorite term for such stuff (not in her catalog) comes from David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest. It’s “Many Wonders,” which endnote 319 glosses as “Incandenza family term for leftovers.” Avril Incandenza to her son Mario:

“Will you eat with us? I hadn’t even thought of dinner until I saw you. I don’t even know what there might be for dinner. Many Wonders. Turkey cartilage.”

I’m convinced that the Incandenzas’ source is a celebrated choral poem from Sophocles’s Antigone, known as the Ode to Man. It begins:

Many wonders, many terrors
But none more wonderful than the human race
    Or more dangerous.

In our house it’s called “parade of leftovers.”

[Translation by Peter Meineck, from Theban Plays (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2003).]