As hinted at in the Amazing Mules post, due to some historical quirks, the English language has a truly ridiculous amount of incredibly specific words relating to animals. This goes light years beyond preschool “the Cow Goes Moo” stuff that everybody knows. In fact, most of this is so insanely, ludicrously exacting that you’re unlikely to ever use it or even know it, unless you take up a hobby related to the animal in question, in which case it falls under specialized jargon. Why learn it at all then? Because these words can reveal an awful lot about the history and society that produced them, and the people who need this vocabulary today. You’re not going to come up with and agree on an intricate vocabulary relating to, say, inducing a bird of prey to hork up a hairball made of its un-digestible prey remains – called casting, unless it’s really important. Rest assured, what you see here is just the very tip of the English animal terms iceberg.
Here’s your obvious LANGUAGE WARNING for the post: due to use as insults, some of these words have become “bad words” in modern English. I can’t censor anything, since the whole point is to learn the vocabulary.
Keep an Eye Out! It’s Historical Background!
There are a few processes at work here, as to why English has so many animal vocabulary words. Let’s look at four of them:
- Modern English is a constantly changing mishmash of several languages. At the time in which these animals were so important, the Normans were in power in England, and a lot of the courtly animal-terms were adopted from their language. This is especially obvious in the case of meat vs the animal it comes from. This is why it’s a quarter pound ground beef (beuf) burger, and not a quarter pound ground COW FLESH burger. As a contrasting example that proves the rule, this didn’t happen in the related language German, and that’s why in that language, pork is literally SWINE FLESH.
- (Highly ritualized) hunting was a foundation of medieval European society, and was a means of enforcing class dynamics. Proper use of the jargon separated the nobles from everyone else, and maintained the shape of society. There are several weird holdovers of this dynamic today, that we notice from the United States of America, where we jumped the tracks before a few key social changes in Britain, proper. There’s probably a whole post on this in the future, but, suffice to say in Britain hunting and hunting opposition is very much tied into class conflict, where here it isn’t so much. Robin Hood was outlawed for killing the King’s deer, but here everybody was eating venison to survive, and even today we just try to make a buck. Look for animals people probably hunted.
- Actual jargon. In the same way that we work with computers as a basic matter of keeping our society running, and therefore we have a bunch of highly technical terms for computers, what computers do, and parts of a computer, when everything ran on literal horsepower, there was a whole host of specialized horse terms. Look for animals people needed and lived closely with in their daily lives, or to do their jobs.
- The wanna-be brigade. For some of these animals, when they were beginning to be bred selectively in the 18th and 19th Centuries, people who participated in this dawning animal fancy wanted to make their hobby more respectable and legitimate by coming up with specialized vocabulary, to match the historical ones. Look for animals that were part of the selective breeding boom in the last 300 years, like cats.
Let’s Learn Some Really Precise Animal Terms in English:
Ankole Watusi cattle in a field. My personal favorite breed of cattle. They’re a status symbol, a medium of exchange, and basically the cattle equivalent of a purse dog. Cows aren’t always about meat and milk.
The Cow Goes Moo!
The sound they make – low
Cows, as a species – cattle
A group of cattle – herd
Cattle-like – bovine
Baby – calf
Female, before first birth – heifer
Female, after giving birth – cow
Male, castrated – ox, steer
Male, adult and intact – bull
Female, born as part of a set of fraternal twins with a male calf, exposed to enough testosterone in the womb that she acts like a bull – freemartin (see what I mean about ridiculously specific?)
The Horse Goes Neigh!
The sound they make – neigh, whinny, snort, scream, nicker
Horses, as a species – horses
A group of horses – herd
A family group of feral horses – band
An all-male group of mostly unrelated feral horses – bachelor herd
Horse-like – equine
Baby – foal
Female, before puberty – filly
Female, after puberty – mare
Male, before puberty – colt
Male, castrated – geldling
Male, adult and intact – stallion, horse
Male, adult, and with an un-descended testicle – ridgling
The Ass / Donkey Goes Hee-Haw!
The sound they make – bray
Donkeys, as a species – donkeys, asses
Doney-like – asinine
A group of donkeys – herd
Baby – foal
Female, intact – jenny, jennet
Male, castrated – gelding
Male, adult and intact – jack
Sheep are also amazing. Shear them to get wool. The grease from the wool is highly prized lanolin, which is sold in high-end skin creams.
The Sheep Goes Baa!
The sound they make – baa
Sheep, as a species – sheep
Sheep-like – ovine
A group of sheep – herd
Baby – lamb
Female, intact – ewe
Male, castrated – wether (a wether won’t get your ewes preggers, or go aggro on the other sheep, and he’ll follow the herd wherever they go. They used to put bells on them, so that if you heard the belled wether, you’d know where the rest of the sheep were. That’s why the word for an individual that shows the direction that the rest are going, or where they are is BELLWETHER.)
Male, adult and intact – ram
The Whale Goes (cetacean vocal range extends from infrasound to ultrasound – good luck with figuring that out).
A group of whales – pod
Baby – calf
Female – cow
Male – bull
The Cat Goes Meow!
The sound they make – meow, hiss, caterwaul
Cats, as a species – cats
Cat-like – feline
A group of cats – clowder
Baby – kitten
Female, intact – queen
Male, castrated – gib
Male, adult and intact – tom
You’d be hard-pressed to find a human culture that doesn’t have dogs. The style of this Korean silk painting by Yi Am (Joseon Dynasty, first half of the 1500s) just makes them look even softer and cuter. PUPPIES!!
The Dog Goes Bark!
The sound they make – bark, howl, growl
The howling of a pack of hunting hounds on the trail of prey – bay
Dogs, as a species – dogs
Dog-like – canine
A group of dogs – pack
Baby – puppy
Female – bitch
Male – dog
The Falcon Goes Skreeee!
(Except they don’t, generally. The famous piercing scream used as a stock sound effect for birds of prey is actually very specific only to the Red Tailed Hawk, which isn’t even a falcon. Birds you’ve heard this used for, like Bald Eagles, actually make very different sounds – in their case, the Bald Eagle goes tseep eep-eeep eep eep … twitter-itter-itter-itter … twitter-itter … tseep eep.)
Falcons, as a group – falcons
Baby – eyas
Female – falcon
Male – tiercel (Male birds of prey are usually noticeably petite compared to the brawnier females, on average about 1/3 smaller. As such, the males are quicker, but the females generally take larger prey, and were the more favored birds to hunt with.)
The Chicken Goes Cluck!
The sound they make – cluck, cheep, crow
Chickens, as a species – chickens
A group of chickens – flock
Baby – chick, chicken
Female, adult – hen
Male, castrated – capon (Yes, this is a thing. Fun fact about puberty: the signal to stop the growth spurt, develop secondary sex characteristics, and put on muscle in male animals is sent by the testes. Some castrated male animals go through a growth spurt that never slams to a halt like this, since the signal never comes, and get bigger and fatter than they would have, until the rest of their hormonal system just kind of gives up on puberty and settles down. As the biggest, fattest, and most tender of chickenkind, as well as the fact that some surgery is required to make them, capons are pretty expensive. Check the specialty frozen meats in the store to see what I mean.)
Male, adult and intact – rooster, cock
Although they’re not so common here, and therefore quite expensive, ducks are a hugely important livestock and eggs animal in other parts of the world.
The Duck Goes Quack!
The sound they make – quack
Ducks, as a species – ducks
A group of ducks – flock
Baby – duckling
Female – duck
Male – drake
The Goose Goes Honk!
The sound they make – honk, cackle
A group of geese – flock
Baby – gosling
Female – goose
Male – gander
The Swan Goes (…)
The sound they make – hiss, (there’s a reason they’re called Mute Swans)
A group of swans – flock
Baby – cygnet
Female – pen
Male – cob
What does the fox say? – yip, yelp
Foxes, as a species – foxes
Fox-like – vulpine
Baby – kit
Female – vixen
Male – tom