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Calling bison ‘buffalo’ is a North American thing, generally. It’s part of a huge pattern of naming confusions between British and American English for ungulate
by jameshart 3y ago
Calling bison ‘buffalo’ is a North American thing, generally. It’s part of a huge pattern of naming confusions between British and American English for ungulates. An elk in Eurasia traditionally means what is a called a moose in North America, but in North America what they call an elk is more similar to a European red deer. America also calls its pronghorn (which is not an antelope) an antelope, and its reindeer caribou, unless they’re pulling Santa’s sleigh. Muskoxen also aren’t oxen.
But the bighorn sheep is really a sheep and it does have big horns, so they have that going for them.
- HarHarVeryFunny 3y agoYeah, but I'm an ex-Brit, so that's not really a good excuse :) My wife's Belarusian though, and I have been to Belovezhskaya Pushcha and seen these buffalo/bison beasties, so I've got that going for me!
- Ichthypresbyter 3y agoNot just English. The Dutch word for Alces alces (the animal called a moose in North America and an elk in Europe) is "eland". Dutch settlers in South Africa decided to use that word for the large antelope of the genus Taurotragus, which is still called an eland in English. Modern Dutch distinguishes the two by calling the antelope an "eland antelope", while Afrikaans calls the moose/elk an "American/European eland".