rắn cấc
Definition
Adjective: - Hardened and dry to the point of being tough and difficult to chew or eat. This word specifically describes food, especially starchy items like rice cakes or bread, that has become excessively dry, hard, and shrunken due to age or exposure to air, losing its original soft and palatable texture.
Usage Examples
- (The sticky rice cake left for three days has become hardened and tough.)
- (This piece of bread is dried out and hard, it's inedible now.)
Advanced Usage
- The term is almost exclusively used in a culinary context to criticize the state of food. It carries a strong negative connotation of being unpleasantly inedible due to texture, not just stale.
Variants and Related Words
- Khô cứng (adj): dry and hard. A more general term for any object that is dry and hard, not limited to food.
- Rắn lại (v): to harden, to become solid. Describes the process of hardening.
Synonyms
- Desiccated: dried out completely.
- Tough: difficult to cut or chew.
- Stale (when implying hardness): no longer fresh and pleasant to eat.
Related Idioms
- While there is no direct idiom with rắn cấc, the concept is related to the saying:
- Cũng như bánh giầy rắn cấc: (As unpalatable as a hardened rice cake.) Used figuratively to describe something that has become useless or unpleasant.
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Hardened
