Comment by nucleardog
2 days ago
Huh, that makes sense given "all dressed" came from French and New Orleans' French history.
I'm not sure why we both ended up with "dressed" given the French is literally "all garnishes / toppings" or "wholly garnished / topped". I'm sure some linguist could probably do a dissertation on this or something. And hopefully also cover how Saskatchewan ended up with using "all dressed" because I'm really curious about that outlier.
> I'm not sure why we both ended up with "dressed" given the French is literally "all garnishes / toppings" or "wholly garnished / topped".
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/dress
> 4. (also figuratively) To adorn or ornament (something). [from 15th c.]
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/garnish
> 1. To decorate with ornaments; to adorn; to embellish.
(Bonus: "garnish" is etymologically related to "warn". There are many such other pairs in English, e.g. "guarantee" / "warranty" and "guard" / "ward". (As I understand it: the Gauls could pronounce the "g", but the Franks couldn't.)