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"I cannot believe that these people actually exchange real American currency for this square, steamed mixture of rodent feces and sawdust on a tiny bun. This is the **bastard love child** of a 7-Eleven microwavable meat patty and the entrail drippings of roadkill left to fester on Midwestern highways in the hot July sun. Happily it’s as thin as a Post-it note so as not to avoid inadvertently engaging your gag reflex."
Explanation: The writer is really disgusted by what he sees and exaggerates a bit. Yes a "bastard love child" is an illegitimate child but here it has a figurative meaning
"the child" in question here is a burger "this square, steamed mixture of rodent feces and sawdust on a tiny bun" (of course it isn't really made of these ingredients! Just that it seems/looks/tastes like it is!)
The only good thing about this is that it's as very thin, so thin (like a Post-it note) that your gag reflex doesn't happen And this piece of shit (food) has been brought together it seems by the unholy (illegitimate) combination of "a 7-Eleven (store) microwavable meat patty and the entrail drippings of roadkill left to fester on Midwestern highways in the hot July sun." Yum yum! How appetising! Of course there is no way the second "ingredients" of "roadkill entrails" were used here!
so yes, bastard is both an illegitimate child and is also a term of abuse as Jack said. The "love child" bit is sarcastic and refers to the "parents" of this "love child". Like what sort of love affair was this? Were they mad putting these together?
Since I assume klp's native language is Russian....
The Nadsat teenage slang in "Clockwork Orange" by Anthony Burgess (was turned into a movie, if I remember correctly): "bratchny bastard брачный (matrimonial), brachny — likely a shortened внебрачный (out-of-wedlock), vnebrachny, even though stripping it of the prefix inverts the meaning" https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix:A_Clockwork_Orange
And yes, you're absolutely right, that's the only definition I see anywhere. But I've encountered a general "child of passion" use often. It's interesting, of course!
Couldn't agree more! Classic euphemism, perhaps sometimes seen as kinder than 'bastard' — very familiar with the term in all sorts of contexts, both literal and figurative.
On the contrary, it's the only definition of "love child" in any dictionary you care to consult, and I think you will find it hard to find examples of it used to mean anything else. "Love child" as a euphemism for an illegitimate child is a very well established expression. Maybe it's not part of your personal language experience, but it's certainly part of mine, and the evidence that it is part of mainstream usage all over the English-speaking world is overwhelming.
""Love Child" is a 1968 song released by the Motown label for Diana Ross & the Supremes. [...] "Love Child" also performed well on the soul chart [...] and paved new ground for a major pop hit with its then-controversial subject matter of illegitimacy." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love_Child_(song)
Yes, I find that surprising. Because it conflicts with actual language experience. (I mean - it *can* be used that way, but that's not even close to being the term's clear single usage.) Actual experience wins.
This is a fairly common figurative expression. Literally it's a tautology, because "bastard" and "love child" are two ways of saying the same thing. If I had to replace it with a single phrase, I would say it usually means a grotesque hybrid, the product of combining two things normally considered incompatible, or at least very different. Sometimes it just means a degenerate derivative of something. Here it's used loosely, and means the even more horrible result of combining two already horrible things. The invective is vigorous but crude and really not very witty.
Rather odd to see it here in combination with "love child", which is usually used instead of "bastard" when the literal sense is meant but might be considered insulting. It was not always considered abusive. In the 11th century, William the Conqueror was widely known as William the Bastard, and was welcome with cries of "Long live the Bastard!" (probably would have been a capital offence if it was thought such an insult as it is nowadays).
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Answers
8 mins confidence: peer agreement (net): +2
illegitimate child, born as a result of a (possibly short-lived) sexual encounter
Explanation: Literally, it means an unintended child, illegitimate (i.e. born out of wedlock), usually as the resukt of some love affair that was not intended to be founding a family.
Here, of course, it is being used figuratively to describe this disgusting food, which the writer suggests was the unwanted result of the 'union' of a "7–11 patty" and "entrail drippings"
It seems it wasn't terribly appetising...
Tony M France Local time: 02:57 Works in field Native speaker of: English PRO pts in category: 309
peer agreement (net): +2
