Last night, as I was wandering through my local German grocery store, looking for interesting products to try, I came across Thunfisch Brotaufstrich. What is that? Let’s break it down. Der Thunfisch is pretty self-explanatory: it’s tuna. Das Brot is bread. Der Strich is a streak, line, dash, or coating, from streichen, which means to make a single straight stroke across something and therefore can either mean to erase, scrape, scrub, spread, or coat. Auf, of course, means onto.
So Thunfisch Brotaufstrich means tuna that you spread onto bread. I left that one on the shelf!