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The word 'beef' entered the English language following the Norman invasion in 1066. It's a word with Latin roots, but came to English via French. Consider the
by doktrin 13y ago
The word 'beef' entered the English language following the Norman invasion in 1066. It's a word with Latin roots, but came to English via French.
Consider the dichotomy between sheep & mutton, or pig & pork. In all instances, the word referring to the animal has "old English", or Anglo Saxon roots. Likewise, the word referring to the meat is Latin via French.
This linguistic gap may have its roots in social divisions. In the years following the Norman invasion, the upper class spoke French. They also consumed most of the meat.
The conquered, who by and large did a lot of the agricultural work & raised the livestock, spoke Anglo Saxon ("old English").
Regardless of etymology, though, beef doesn't refer to generic 'meat'.
- brianbreslin 13y agohttp://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/b%C5%93uf http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/b%C5%93uf boeuf is french for beef
- doktrin 13y agoI think we're in agreement. In French, however, boeuf can also refer to the animal.
- jfb 13y agoAs it can in English ("one beef, two beeves").
- doktrin 13y agoSounds anachronistic. I can't imagine going to a farm and inquiring about their "herd of beeves".
- jfb 13y agoWell, it hasn't been in common use for, what, 400 years? But it's a perfectly cromulent usage.
- jonnathanson 13y ago"Beeves" is a little archaic, and if you were to poll most ranchers and traders today, they'd probably use "beefs." But it's still acceptable, and it hasn't completely fallen out of usage. (Nor has referring to a cow as a "beef" fallen out of usage, especially in the livestock trade. It's convenient to refer to a cow bred for consumption as a "beef," to differentiate it from a cow bred for dairy.)
- pessimizer 13y ago"Beef" in the second case is probably short for 'beef cow,' just like 'dairy' is going to be short for 'dairy cow,' not some weird anachronistic usage (unless the Normans once called cows 'dairies.')
- jonnathanson 13y agoStrangely enough, there's actually an anachronistic usage at the heart of it all. The word "beef" came, originally, from the Norman-French "beuf" (precursor of the modern French "boeuf"), from the Latin "bov," which referred to the animal, not the animal's meat. "Beef" started switching meaning from the animal to the meat because the meat was something only upper-class, Norman-descended Englishmen could afford. They had less experience with cows in the field, and more experience with cows as slices of meat on a plate. So the snootier, upper-crust "beef" came to be used in the context of food, while the Old English, working-class "cow" was still used by the actual farmers in the fields, who were dealing primarily with the animals. Merchants and middlemen, who dealt primarily in the meat but also in the livestock, adopted the more aspirational "beef" to refer to both. This usage was common until as recently as about 100 years ago. There are probably few people around today who'd call a cow "a beef," though there are still people who'd refer to a herd of cows (or any quantity on a market) as a "beef herd," or a "herd of beef." I'm not going to go out on a limb and claim that "beef" is common, modern usage when referring to the animal. (And "beeves" is now so uncommon as to sound funny to the modern ear.) But the usage is not entirely extinct, and in instances when differentiating beef from dairy, it's moderately useful.
- wglb 13y agoMore likely they would say "head", as in "two head of cattle". In all my childhood days on the farm, I don't think I ever heard the word "beefs", much less "beeves". Usage of the latter would likely get you a look as if you had come from back east.
- huxley 13y agoYeah, I think the rancher would direct you to the nearest apiary, perhaps gently suggesting that the proper collective noun is "swarm of bees"
- pacofvf 13y agoIt's funny, In Spanish we don't have an equivalent of "beef", we use the word for meat "carne", but we have the anglicism "bife" (from beef) mostly used in South America, or "bistec" (from beefsteak) mostly used in Central and North America.
- acjohnson55 13y agoI thought the word "vaca" meant beef?
- adolph 13y agoIt has a more specific connotation of cow and can mean the edible flesh derived from a cow.
- ekianjo 13y agoYeah, almost all words for meat in English come from the word for the same animal in French. * Beef from Boeuf * Mutton from Mouton * Pork from porc * etc...
- NAFV_P 13y ago> Yeah, almost all words for meat in English come from the word for the same animal in French. That doesn't apply to doner kebabs.