As adults who are trying to learn English soon discover, English can be a strange and often baffling language not only in terms of its grammar, but also in its nouns. One of the idiosyncrasies of English is the existence of totally different words for the animal and for the meat from the animal.
In October 1066, William the Conqueror landed in England, bringing with them their dialect of Norman French, a language very different from the Germanic Old English spoken by the people they conquered. The impact of Latin-based French on English, coupled with the influence of Latin which was used in churches and institutions of higher learning, has led some people, including a few scholars, to falsely assume that English was a Latin-based language.
In his book Inventing English: A Portable History of the Language, Seth Lerer writes:
“The Normans brought new words for learning, commerce, administration, the church, technology, cooking, and so on. Such words are easily recognizable: they are often polysyllabic, with distinguishing sounds and spellings.”
Seth Lerer also reports:
“The Normans were originally a Germanic people, and they spoke a dialect of French that retained some of the sounds of the Germanic languages.”
With regard to cuisine, since the French-speaking nobility had “fine” dining, French was used for the food on the table, while English, the language of the peasants who raised the food, continued to be used for the animals from which the food came.
In 1819, Sir Walter Scott’s popular novel, Ivanhoe, has Wamba the Jester explaining food etymology to Gurth, the swineherd. In his Dictionary of Word Origins, Joseph Shipley reports:
“He points out that while domestic animals are alive and must be tended, they are simple Saxon calf and sheep, cow, pig, swine, and the rest; but when they are dressed and ready to be served before the Norman conquerors, they are Milord Norman (French) veal, pork, mutton, beef.”
Cow/Beef
In everyday English, the term cow is usually used to describe a female bovine animal and it is also used for the female of other large mammals. In terms of etymology, cow is from the Middle English cu (also spelled qu, kowh) which is from the Old English cu which is from the Proto-Germanic *kwon. Going back farther in time, these are based on the Proto-Indo-European root *gwou- which means “ox, bull, cow.”
In modern English, the word heifer describes a cow that has not yet calved and calf describes an animal of either sex which is less than a year old. The etymology of heifer is a bit murky, but it seems to have come from the West Saxon dialect of Old English heahfore or from the Northumbrian dialect of Old English hehfaro (plural heffera). There don’t seem to be any non-English origins for heifer.
In everyday English, a bunch of cows are often referred to as cattle. The word cattle came into English in the mid-thirteenth century with the meaning of “property” and its origin is found in the Anglo-French word catel which is from the Medieval Latin capitale meaning “property, stock.” In Middle English, cattle began to acquire the more specialized meaning of “movable property, livestock.” John Ayto, in his Dictionary of Word Origins, explains the etymology this way:
“From earliest times, however, it was applied specifically to livestock thought as property. In the Middle Ages it was a wide-ranging term in animal husbandry, being used for horses, sheep, pigs, and even poultry and bees, as well as cows, and such usage survived dialectally until comparatively recently, but from the sixteenth century onwards there is increasing evidence of the word’s being restricted solely to cows.”
When we go into a restaurant or sit down at the dinner table, we don’t eat cow or cattle, rather we eat beef. The English word beef comes, of course, from the Norman French beuf which is from the Latin bovem which is from the Proto-Indo-European root *gwou- meaning “ox, bull, cow.” When the French-speaking nobility sat down at the banquet to eat beef, the English-speaking peasants were out in the fields tending the cows.
The Norman lords were also found of eating the meat from calves which became known as veal in modern English. The word veal is from the Norman French vel which is from the Old French veel meaning “a calf” which is from the Latin vitellus meaning “a little calf.”
Pig/Pork
The word pig appears to have come into English in the mid-thirteenth century from the Middle English pigge meaning “a young pig.” The Middle English pigge probably derived from the Old English *picg and further etymology is unknown. It has been suggested that pig may have come from the Old English pic meaning “pointed object” in reference to the animal’s pointed snout.
An older word for pig is swine which was the primary word for the animal until it was replaced by pig. The origins of swine are found in the Old English swin and the Proto-Germanic *swinam and, farther back in time, the Proto-Indo-European root *su- meaning “pig”.
As the word pig was coming into English, the French-speaking nobility introduced the term pork to mean “the flesh of a pig as food”. Pork is from the Old French porc meaning “pig, swine, boar” which is from the Latin porcus which is from the Proto-Indo-European *porko- meaning “young pig.”
Sheep/Mutton
Those who have traveled through the British countryside or watched British TV programs set in the country, have noticed an abundance of animals known in English as sheep. The English word sheep comes from the Old English sceap which is from the West Germanic *skæpan which is of unknown origin. John Ayto, in his Dictionary of Word Origins, writes:
“It is not known where it came from, although it has been speculated that it may be related to German schaffen ‘make, create’ (and hence to English shape), and that its underlying meaning is hence ‘creature.’”
In English, sheep is both singular and plural, but in Old Northumbrian, the plural was scipo.
Among the Navajo Indians of the American Southwest, one of the common Native American foods is mutton stew made from the flesh of sheep. Once again, we have the French-speaking Norman lords to thank for the English word mutton which is from the Old French moton which is from the Medieval Latin multonem which is most likely from the Proto-Indo-European root *mel- meaning “soft.”
Deer/Venison
In Old English the word deor was used to mean “wild animal, beast, any wild quadruped.” The Old English word for the animal called deer in modern English was Heorot. By the fifteenth century, deor had become deer and its meaning had become specialized to mean only one kind of wild animal. In fifteenth-century England, deer was the most widely hunted animal.
With regard to the etymology of deer (deor), it probably comes from the Proto-Germanic *deuzam which means “animal”, particularly “wild animal.” Going farther back in time, deer is probably from the Proto-Indo-European *dheusom meaning “creature that breathes” and is based on the root *dheu- meaning “cloud, breath.”
In the class system established following the Norman Conquest of 1066, the French-speaking nobility ate the product of the hunt and by about 1300, the word venison had entered the English lexicon indicating deer meat that had been prepared as food. With regard to etymology, deer is from the Old French venesoun meaning “meat of large game” which is, in turn, from the Latin venationem meaning “a hunt, hunting, the chase. Going back farther in time to Proto-Indo-European, venison is probably from *wen-a- which is from the root *wen- which means “to desire, to strive for.”
In an essay in The Conversation, Dan Meyers writes:
“Following the invasion and the establishment of the Royal Forests, any hunted animal was called ‘venison’ after it was killed; because more deer were hunted than any other animal, the name stuck.”
More about English
Origins of English: Good and Evil
Origins of English: Some Obsolete Words
Origins of English: Middle English
Origins of English: The Anglo-Saxon Roots
Origins of English: The Normans
Origins of English: Bread
Origins of English: Some Cat Expressions
Origins of English: Silly, Fool, Buffoon