Several online dictionaries, including Merriam-Webster, list “beeves” as the plural of “beef”.
In fact, Kimstu’s cite lists “beeves” right above the definition.
“Cow” refers both to the species as a whole, and to the female of the species. That’s linguistically inconvenient, but it’s not entirely unheard-of (though more often, the general term is the male one, not the female one). It’s also inconvenient that the specifically male and female words “cow” and “bull” are also applied to species that aren’t called “cow” in general, such as elephants. But neither of those is what’s unique about Bos taurus.
What’s unique about it is that word “cattle”. Here we have a plural word, that does not have a singular. The singular isn’t “cow”, because the plural of “cow” is “cows”. The singular isn’t “beef”, because the plural of “beef” is “beeves”. The singular isn’t “ox” or “steer”, because the plurals of those are “oxen” and “steers”. It’s not the nearly-obsolete “kine”, because that’s also a plural, with the even-more-obsolete singular “kye”.
So what is the word whose plural is “cattle”? It doesn’t seem to exist. And I don’t think there’s any other case of that in English.
…and even with humans. In the cuckold world, alpha male lovers are referred to as “bulls.”
Humans being referred to as “bulls” is a metaphor. The standard term for an adult male human is “man”, and only some men would be metaphorically bulls. Not so for elephants: Every adult male elephant is a bull, because that’s the standard term for an adult male elephant.
It’s not that cattle (cf. chattel) does not have a singular in English, namely “cattle”. [“A cattle, when it goes into a drinking pit… throws the chief part of its weight upon its fore feet.” — W. H. Marshall, 1796]
I’m sure there is a list somewhere of exclusively or usually pluralia tantum in English: cattle, trousers, shorts, clothes, thanks, scissors, tweezers, binoculars, remains, genitals, spectacles, …; you get the idea.
When American farmers talk about their livestock – and it can be quite different in other countries that speak English – cattle is the plural, head the singular, for groups of animals not distinguished by sex. “I have forty head of cattle”. Also used of other livestock like sheep, goats, pigs.
In English there are a number of common collective animal nouns – swine, cattle – in which the singular is completely different, and many plurals describing animals which live in groups, in which the singular is the same, like fish, sheep, deer.
I’ve never heard the term ‘beeves’ in the US but I’m not in the cattle business, maybe it is used.
The unit of measure of “beef” is a side ie a side of beef.
Ergo, if that logic holds 2 sides of beef = 1 beeve = 1 head of (slaughtered) cattle
And the lack of a singular term for live, gender unknown cattle remains.
You could also say that “go” has no past tense, because “went” is the past tense of “wend”. But, language isn’t required to follow this kind of logic.
Huh, I never realized that before.
Clearly not. But it’s still amusing to point out these illogical bits, especially the more unusual ones, and to attempt to retroactively fanwank logic into them.
What about “gone”?
“Gone” is the past participle of “go”, not the simple past tense. You can use some auxiliary verb(s) to construct sentences with it like “I have gone” or “I will have gone”, but in standard American/British/etc. English you can’t just say “I gone” to convey the meaning “I went”.