Back (way back) in high school, my friends and I engaged in a deep philosophical discussion about cafeteria fare. Mainly, is it ‘MACARONI salad’ or ‘macaroni SALAD’?  A consensus was never reached, and the mystery of macaroni remains to this day … until I went to lunch a few years back.  I ordered a chicken salad.  The server, more aware of the choices on the menu, asked “you mean the salad with chicken on it, or the stuff with mayonnaise?”.  Hmmm.  This, of course, begged the question “what IS chicken salad?” What do you think of when you think of chicken salad?  Well, then I got to thinking – is there a difference between chicken SALAD and CHICKEN salad?

Now the macaroni mystery was back with full force.  Of course, this time around, there were two versions of salad (whereas with macaroni salad, it’s simply macaroni salad, though some may argue whether it should include hard boiled eggs or not).  I had my theories on the subject, but to confirm my suspicions, I asked around.  Aside from people thinking I was crazy, they also differed on the matter. To some, CHICKEN salad was the salad with chicken on it (grilled or fried) -the emphasis on the adjective ‘chicken’ describing the salad. Chicken SALAD had the emphasis on the adjective ‘salad’ to describe how the chicken was prepared.  For others, the noun was the emphasis (chicken being the main ingredient in the stuff with mayo, therefore deserving of more attention).

I still don’t know which is which. Or, for that matter, if it’s MACARONI salad or macaroni SALAD, but it brings up a good point.  People often perceive things in different ways without even thinking about it.  Sometimes it takes silly people like me to point it out and totally confuse and confound everyone.  In this case, if we all agree to call CHICKEN salad the salad with chicken on it, then the servers will never have to ask.  Or, we can think of another name for one of them to avoid confusion.  We all need to keep that in mind when we name things or communicate with people.  Sometimes context is key and a little extra verbiage describing the subject at hand is necessary.