Animal verbs

Animals are basic part of human existence and vocabulary.  Even in our modern era, small children immediately learn words to distinguish animals from people.  So, it is no wonder that many animals have lent their name to a behavior, albeit without their permission.

The farmyard is the dream place for behaviorists.  They can see horses horse around, running and mock fighting as well as pigs pig out, eating all they can. If those horses get lazy, dogs will dog them while hounds will hound them to get them moving again. Not all is fun and games. The goat goats you while the ram rams you for no reason at all, not to mention the goose goosing you, which can give you quite a jump. It is not all that wonderful for the animals, to tell the truth.  The cows feel cowed by just about everything despite their large size while chickens chicken out from any confrontation from a non-fowl, maybe for a good reason. All this action is at the doorstep of farmer.

Not that is much quieter in the wild. The weasel try to weasel his way into anywhere there is food, using his intelligence. The hawk hawks all the best food for himself, often being the apex bird of prey. The wolf wolves down its food since it has to share it with its group. A buffalo can buffalo its way into any field. By contrast, a fox has to outfox its prey or dies. A duck ducks when it hears a rifle shot, as it should. On a more relaxed level, monkeys monkey around when they are not looking for food, as when an ape apes a behavior, imitating it. Those deer are just as active. Bucks buck the system and try to steal away the does while fawns fawn to those same does to ensure that they receive milk and protection. Parrots parrot the behavior of other animals to gain an advantage.  We won't even talk about what the bears bear.

Don't underestimate the insect kingdom.  As anybody who has ever tried to take a nap during the day, flies fly, making it sometimes hard to kill them. Worms can generally worm themselves into anywhere, including our skin. Leaches, both the insect and people versions, leech our energy and health. These critters are not friendly.

So, the next time you are slothful, are tired of the bull or even in a foul or catty mood, look outside in the yard or at a nature documentary.  You will realize that, as they say in that awful British commercial for a credit company, you are not alone. 

Names Matter

To take Hannah Arendt slightly out of context, language not only expresses what feel but determines what we feel.  A prime example is food.  Especially in the modern age when most people don’t raise their one food or often don’t even see a live animal aside the zoo, the source animal and the food on the plate are completely distinct in the people’s mind.  Theoretically and, for some people, practically, the thought of eating that cute rabbit or lamb takes the appetite away.

The culinary solution is to linguistically avoid connection.  The first way is to more accidental and historical than intentional.  Due to class and language issue in Norman English, where the French-speaking Normans enjoyed the “fruit” of the labor of the Anglo-Saxon speaking locals, the animal and derived meat had different names.  Cows, lambs, and pigs produced beef, mutton, and pork, respectively.  To be fair, saying out loud that you would like half of a pound of cow sound today a bit crude.

A more purposeful vocabulary shift is the purposeful development of alternative vocabulary to make certain foods more palatable.  Some examples include venison, sweetbread, tripe, and sausage / hot dog.  In animal terms, that means eating wild meat, generally deer, brain, intestines, and garbage meat in an edible bag, respectively.  As for the latter, how many kids would enjoy a hot dog if they knew what really was in it?

Modern culinary literature, i.e. the art of making it almost it impossible to understand what you are going to order, emphasizes foreign words because they sound exotic and induce no image in diners’ minds  concerning what is the source of their protein.  It sound so adventurous (and accordingly expensive) to eat les fruits de mer, escargots, canard, or calamari, to name a few.  To those who are afraid to ask, those lucky people are about to eat shellfish, snails, duck, and squid.  How delicious!  (Actually, they are in my opinion, but, as they say in French and most languages, chacun á son gout or to each his own).

So, when you go to that fancy restaurant and struggle to understand what exactly you should order (and are afraid to ask, as Woody Allen would say), remember, it is sometimes better to bluff your way and confidently order that mysterious item.  You might discover that brains are really tasty, or maybe not.