Re: "Wife"

John Cowan wrote:

>Tristan McLeay scripsit:
>
>
>
>>As in a body of water? That's an interesting divergence.
>>
>>
>
>No, no, as in "sire" and "dam".  I know you have racehorses Down Under:
>what words do they use for horse-breeding?
>
>
The only thing I know about racehorses Down Under is Phar Lap (a horse)
was a Kiwi, was murdered in America and now (or has) lives in the
Melbourne Museum, and that they come out to play on the first Tuesday in
November, so while everyone else in Melbourne gets a public holiday
then, us poor uni students don't. But for all I know, the horses could
have come from outer space :)

(Unis only get national and nearly-national public holidays off; they
continue like normal for things like Labour Day which is different in
every state and Melbourne Cup which is only a holiday in Melbourne (in
country Victoria it's BAU except for a couple of minutes at 2.00)

Daniel Andreasson wrote:

>You know perfectly well that he meant "dam" as in
>'animal mother'. He even wrote "animal mother". OTOH,
>it would be very interesting if it actually DID mean
>'body of water' and that Finnish _äiti_ had both of
>the English meanings. What are the odds for that
>happening?
>
You will forgive me for taking offence at your comment, but the only
senses of 'dam' (as a noun) I was familiar with till I read John Cowan's
post, ignoring the homophone 'damn', are an artifical lake generally in
a farm, an artificial lake caused by damming a river/creek, and the dam
wall used to make the second sense of dam. I do not enjoy being told
what I do and don't know.

When was the last time I bred any animals? I have no more reason to know
the technical terms of animal breeding than animals breeders have to
know what words like 'phoneme' mean.

--
Tristan                  <kesuari@...>

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