Re: Flesh Eating Names

Living in Alberta, cattle country of Alberta, it is normal for the generic name of
the animal in question to also be cow. One would refer to a herd of cows. Less
common would be steer but that most often refers to both cows and neutered
bulls raised for slaughter. I often hear "beef" used in this manner. A
neighbour once gave me some meat for my family after he slaughtered a beef.

S

-----Original Message-----
From: Constructed Languages List [mailto:CONLANG@listserv.brown.edu] On Behalf Of Scott Caldwell
Sent: Monday, October 13, 2008 6:04 PM
To: CONLANG@listserv.brown.edu
Subject: Re: Flesh Eating Names


On 13-Oct-08, at 4:32 PM, Peter Collier wrote:

> --------------------------------------------------
> From: "Mark J. Reed" <markjreed@...>
> Sent: Monday, October 13, 2008 7:42 PM
> To: <CONLANG@...>
> Subject: Re: Flesh Eating Names
>
>> On an only-vaguely-related note, what's the sex-neutral term in
>> English for a "bull"/"cow"/bovine thingy?   I read somewhere once
>> that
>> "ox" used to fill that role before being co-opted to refer to a
>> different subcategory of the same species.  What's the singular of
>> "cattle"?
>
>
> Well, for me at least, the non-specific term would be "cow" (even to
> the extent of having said before now something as strange as "a male
> cow is called a bull".)
>
> Cattle has no singular form.
My father used the term "cattle beast".


scott

Iryal -- http://homepage.mac.com/sjcaldwell/Wikilret/