Why do we refer to all the major meats that we eat with euphemisms?
It’s not cow, it’s beef. It’s not pig; it’s pork. Calf is veal, etc. OK, chicken is often chicken, but it also is called poultry.
It seems strange that this started long ago, when hardier folk wouldn’t have been so queasy about their carnivorous tendencies.
“You had me at ‘Hell no.’”
It’s not cow, it’s beef. It’s not pig; it’s pork. Calf is veal, etc. OK, chicken is often chicken, but it also is called poultry.
Slight WAG here…
IIRC, those all come from Norman french. They aren’t euphemisms, they’re just what the rulers of Norman England refered to the various types of animals/meats as. The simple country folk just picked them up as the names for the animal once they became food.
It’s worth the risk of burning, to have a second chance…
Doob has it right, the double entry naming comes from our language’s heavy reliance on both Romance and Germanic languages.
Yes, it can be confusing, but it also gives English a richness because we have several root words to choose from to name similar things. Thus, we have nuanced synonyms.
So, I can feel (German) for you, have compassion (Latin) for you, or, stealing from the Greeks, have sympathy for you.
The germans taught us to say ‘cow,’ but the French, known for their cooking, taught us to say ‘beef.’
Peace.
In some class I vaguely remember, we learned that the difference between pork and pig, for example, was the difference between conqueror and conquered. After William the C., the Saxons were pretty much stuck with the menial jobs, like raising pigs. The Norman rulers, on the other hand, only got to know a pig when it arrived on a platter. So although the two words really meant the same thing, the French form came to refer to the bits that ended up at table.
For poultry and game, the name of the meat is usually the same as the name of the animal (chicken, turkey, rabbit, pheasant, grouse, etc.). The only exception I can think of in this category is venison (derived from the Latin venationem, meaning hunting).
The same is true for fish and seafood.
For farmyard animals, “lamb” describes both the creature and the meat. That leaves veal, pork, beef and mutton (and any others I haven’t thought of). Of these, the OED records that all except beef are or were also used to describe the living creature, viz:
“Hogs and porks, the word appearing to be used indifferently, are occasionally found.” (1887)
“My mother…would receive her prodigal and kill the fatted veal for me.” (1855)
“The word mutton is sometimes used [in America], as it once was in England, to signify a sheep.” (1833)
Beef, the odd one out, seems to have been used to refer to oxen but not cows:
“Behind these came a beef, driven by soldiers… The beef was immediately shot at and butchered.” (1878)
I think that this, basically, supports what the previous posters have said: we use the French word when it’s food and the Anglo-Saxon word when it’s walking around.
You’re probably having trouble remembering what class you learned it in because it was wasn’t what the class was actually teaching; you were probably reading the famous passage in Ivanhoe in which a couple of Saxon serfs bitch about the situation.
John W. Kennedy
“Compact is becoming contract; man only earns and pays.”
– Charles Williams
The posters above me have it right. For a good read on this subject and other facts about the development of the English language, check out Mother Tongue by Bill Bryson.
Both my parents were raised on ranches so squeamishness about where meat came from has never been an issue but we use those terms. I got a kick out of the term “beeves” for cattle on the hoof in the Lonesome Dove miniseries.
Come let us go, I’ve a cask of amontillado.