9/9/00: The Relics of the Class Struggle in the English Language
Does that sound crushingly dull? I should hope not. It's actually really fascinating.
Have you ever thought about why when it's alive it's a cow but when you eat it
it's called beef? It's because of history.
Remember the Normans? They were like Vikings but they spoke French? You knew that. They invaded England (someone was always invading England) at some point, and took over. So the rich people spoke old French, while the poor spoke old English, which -- as you remember from Beowulf no doubt -- sounded like German.
With that in mind, consider the etymology of the words cow and beef:
So see -- the rich people never saw cows when they were alive. The rich were too busy stabbing each other in the back and getting gout and stuff. All they ever saw was when the cow meat appeared on their plate. Meanwhile, the poor people never ate any of the cow meat. They were too poor. Thus the animal was given a German word, and the meat, a French word. "Bull" is also a Germanic word (English bule, from Old English bula; akin to Old Norse boli bull).
It's a similar deal with pork and pig, if you're interested.
But the divide is not as wide between "chicken" and "poultry." While "chicken" is germanic and "poultry" is latinate, the two words are more interchangeable because the poor were more likely to actually eat the chicken than they were to eat any other animals they raised.
This pattern can be seen in many other places. Off hand I can think of one obvious one -- house (germanic) vrs. mansion or castle(latinate). Cool beans, yes? ~_^ back to Loretta's page