Cow-Beef Chicken-Chicken, Circle-Circular, Square-Square????

[Meeko]

Why exactly do we refer to a cooked chicken as ‘chicken’ … shouldn’t Cow be ‘cow’ by the same token?

Also, IIRC, Orange the color was named AFTER the fruit.

[Desmostylus]

Word History: That beef comes from cows is known to most, but the close relationship between the words beef and cow is hardly household knowledge. Cow comes via Middle English from Old English c, which is descended from the Indo-European root *gwou-, also meaning “cow.” This root has descendants in most of the branches of the Indo-European language family. Among those descendants is the Latin word bs, “cow,” whose stem form, bov-, eventually became the Old French word buef, also meaning “cow.” The French nobles who ruled England after the Norman Conquest of course used French words to refer to the meats they were served, so the animal called c by the Anglo-Saxon peasants was called buef by the French nobles when it was brought to them cooked at dinner. Thus arose the distinction between the words for animals and their meat that is also found in the English word-pairs swine/pork, sheep/mutton, and deer/venison. What is interesting about cow/beef is that we are in fact dealing with one and the same word, etymologically speaking.

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[David_Simmons]

@Desmostylus

Word History: That beef comes from cows is known to most, but the close relationship between the words beef and cow is hardly household knowledge. Cow comes via Middle English from Old English c, which is descended from the Indo-European root *gwou-, also meaning “cow.” This root has descendants in most of the branches of the Indo-European language family. Among those descendants is the Latin word bs, “cow,” whose stem form, bov-, eventually became the Old French word buef, also meaning “cow.” The French nobles who ruled England after the Norman Conquest of course used French words to refer to the meats they were served, so the animal called c by the Anglo-Saxon peasants was called buef by the French nobles when it was brought to them cooked at dinner. Thus arose the distinction between the words for animals and their meat that is also found in the English word-pairs swine/pork, sheep/mutton, and deer/venison. What is interesting about cow/beef is that we are in fact dealing with one and the same word, etymologically speaking.

Interesting. I knew that beef, mutton and pork derived from the words of the nobility (thought of as hoity-toity by the conquered) following the Norman Conquest but the fact that cow and beef have a common root was news.

[RM_Mentock]

I can see where you’re going with this, but I would have thought pigs were the more circular, if not elliptical. Chickens, in my mind, are kinda triangular.

[Colibri]

Also see the Staff Report:

Why do we eat “beef” and “pork” rather than “cow” and “pig”?