PAYING FOR PRETENSE:

Writers are often given the advice: "Don't use a $5 word when a 50-cent word will do." But the advice should come with the disclaimer: "Unless you write menus for a living." As Dan Jurafsky, a professor of linguistics at Stanford University discovered, using long words to describe a dish is a sign of an expensive restaurant.

In his hugely entertaining book, The Language of Food, out today, Jurafsky explains that every increase of one letter in the average length of words describing a dish is associated with an increase of 69 cents (42p) in the price of that dish. In a study of 6,500 menus, Jurafsky found that the words "exotic" and "spices" also raise the price of a dish. But "linguistic fillers" like "mouth-watering", "sublime" and "crispy", tend to feature more often on cheap menus.

"At the expensive restaurant, you're supposed to assume that the crispy food will be crispy," Jurafsky said in a telephone interview. "The cheaper restaurants are a little worried that you might not know. It's a kind of status anxiety."

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