loppestre

Old English loppestre may derive from Latin locusta, which meant both 'lobster' and 'locust' — the Romans used the same word for a marine crustacean and a flying insect, presumably because both have segmented bodies, long antennae, and a tendency to swarm. Some linguists suggest a corruption of locusta through a hypothetical Vulgar Latin *lopusta. The path from 'locust' to 'lobster' is not elegant, but language rarely is.

Lobsters were not always luxury food. In colonial New England, they washed ashore in piles two feet deep. They were ground into fertilizer, used as fish bait, and fed to servants, prisoners, and enslaved people. Some indentured servants' contracts stipulated that they would not be fed lobster more than three times a week. The animal was a poverty food.

The transformation began with the railroad. In the 1880s, railroad companies began serving lobster to inland passengers who had no idea it was considered trash food on the coast. Removed from its reputation, lobster tasted like a luxury. By the early 1900s, demand from restaurants and tourists had driven prices up. The poverty food became a status symbol within a single generation.

Today, a Maine lobster dinner costs $30-60. The global lobster industry is worth billions. The American lobster (Homarus americanus) is managed through one of the most carefully regulated fisheries in the world — trap limits, size minimums, v-notching of egg-bearing females. The animal that colonial servants resented eating is now too expensive for most of them to afford.