What is a bee? ‘A well-known insect,’ says the Oxford English Dictionary, passing the buck rather. Similarly, an ash is a ‘well-known forest tree’, an ass is ‘a well-known quadruped of the horse kind’ and asparagus is ‘a well-known delicacy of the table’ — not caviar, which is ‘eaten as a relish’.
Being well-known is an unreliable category. One man’s Kim Kardashian is another man’s Lyndal Roper. I remember encountering caracoles on a Spanish menu and being told that by the waiter that it was a kind of animal with horns. It took me a long time to get from that to ‘snails’. When the OED says that an aucuba is ‘a well-known hardy evergreen’, I am none the wiser till my husband chips in with: ‘That horrible variegated laurel.’
A clue sometimes deployed by the OED is the ‘voice’.
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