Chapter 15
Animals
For a more restful and relaxing end to the working day, you might instead prefer to spend time communing with our fellow creatures. Perhaps this is the time for playing with, chatting to, or mucking out, the family pet.
Rabbits were introduced into Britain by the Normans following the Conquest, along with the name, which can be traced back to the post-Classical Latin rabettus. When adopted into English, rabbit originally designated the young animal, while another French borrowing, coney (ultimately from Latin cuniculus), was used of the adult. Rabbits were widely hunted, leading to the concept of the coney-catcher—a name for a rabbit-hunter, but also used of a cheat and a confidence-trickster.
Cat derives from a late Latin loanword cattus, which is probably ultimately of Egyptian extraction. The Classical Latin word was feles, the origin of the adjective feline, the scientific term meaning ‘cat-like’; the adjectival form of cat—catty—is a term of abuse used to describe someone who is deliberately spiteful. The fashionable lingo known as flappers’ slang used in 1920s America coined a number of unlikely expressions involving animals to describe something of top quality—amongst the widest known are the cat’s whiskers, the cat’s pyjamas, and the cat’s meow. Also still in use is the bee’s knees—other colourful examples, such as the monkey’s eyebrows, the gnat’s elbows, and the elephant’s adenoids, have sadly not survived. In the seventeenth century, something of a very high standard was said to be enough to make a cat speak; a variant of this appears in Dickens’s novel Nicholas Nickleby (1838–9): ‘It’s enough to make a Tom cat talk French grammar.’ Cats feature in numerous other expressions: to be in a tricky situation is to have a cat in hell’s chance, which might result in us looking like something the cat’s brought in. To give away a secret is to let the cat out of the bag; this phrase may originate in an attempt by a market trader to pretend that a bag containing a cat actually holds a more valuable piglet. By opening the bag the deception is revealed—a similar origin lies behind the phrase a pig in a poke (a word for a bag now used only in Scots), referring to goods not inspected at the time of purchase which subsequently turn out to be substandard.
Rodent, the collective term for a group of mammals with prominent incisors, is from the Latin rodere ‘to gnaw’, also the root of corrode. The gerbil gets its name from Latin gerbillus, the diminutive form of gerboa—a rodent that lives in the African desert, known today as the jerboa. As well as rats, mice, hamsters, and gerbils, this group includes squirrels, whose name means ‘shadow tail’, and porcupines, from Latin porcus ‘pig’ and spina ‘thorn’. A folk etymological association with words like serpentine and turpentine produced the variant porpentine—captured for posterity by its appearance in Shakespeare’s Hamlet, where it is used by the ghost to describe the effect a description of his torments would have on Hamlet: ‘Each particular haire to stand on end like quils vpon the fretfull Porpentine.’ Like the porcupine, the hedgehog is also named for its resemblance to a pig, a reference to its protruding snout. Hedgehogs were formerly known as irchins—from the French hérisson—this word survives into modern English as urchin, the name given to a child who lives on the streets.
More mysterious is why guinea pigs should be so called, since they bear little resemblance to a pig; it may be that the squealing sound they make was thought to recall that of a pig. Similarly mysterious is the first part of their name, since they do not originate in either Guinea or New Guinea; they are instead of South American origin. A possible explanation for their association with Guinea lies in a corruption of the name of the South American country Guyana. Alternatively, it may be that Guinea was used as a generic label for a faraway country whose name was unknown. A similar origin appears to lie behind the name of the turkey, a bird which—despite its name—is native to America; its French name, dinde, is based on an equally mistaken association with India (from d’Inde ‘of India’). The hamster gets its name from a German word meaning ‘corn weevil’, which is also misleading since, although the animal is found throughout Europe and Asia, it is not found in Germany.
The first element of dormouse is connected to the French verb dormir ‘to sleep’, and refers to their tendency to spend long periods in hibernation—a reputation alluded to by Lewis Carroll in the character of the soporific dormouse at the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party. The word mouse is a straightforward adoption of the Latin mus; less obvious is the connection between this Latin word and the English word muscle. Muscle is a borrowing of Latin musculus ‘little mouse’, because the shape of a flexing muscle was thought to resemble a mouse moving up and down the arm. The French word for the mouse, souris, is unconnected, since it is derived from Latin sorex, the name for the shrew; the shrew is known in French as the musaraigne, or ‘mouse spider’. In Shakespeare’s day a shrew was also a nagging or scolding wife—as in The Taming of the Shrew. The negative associations of the shrew have also given rise to the adjective shrewd; while this now refers to someone who is intelligent and astute, it originally denoted someone considered wicked or evil.
The word dog is one of a number of animal names, such as frog, hog, pig, and stag, whose origins are unclear. In the case of dog, its Old English ancestor, docga, appears just once in the written record: as a gloss for the Latin word canis. It is found in place and personal names—as in the unfortunately titled Robertus Doggisheued ‘Dog’s head’, and even Hugo Doggetail—suggesting that it was regarded as too colloquial for formal written usage. Its form makes it unlikely that it is of Germanic origin; the more usual term for the animal in Old English was hund, the origin of modern English hound. While hound has survived into modern English, it is principally used of hunting dogs, or in archaic and poetic contexts to refer to dogs more generally.
As they are proverbially man’s best friend, dogs feature in numerous expressions and idioms. Some of these imply that—if they are indeed our best buddies—they don’t do very well out of the deal. Think of phrases like to lead a dog’s life, to die like a dog, it’s not fit for a dog, to throw it to the dogs, to go to the dogs, and to work like a dog. The phrase to keep a dog and bark yourself, referring to the practice of employing someone to do a task but then ending up doing it yourself, makes clear the expectation that dogs were intended to work for their keep. As they got older, so their usefulness diminished—as captured in the proverb you can’t teach an old dog a new trick. The reward for this loyal service was food and lodging, but since the phrase dog’s dinner—as in dressed up like a dog’s dinner—is hardly flattering, we must wonder whether the dog’s life really is a happy one.
Dogs
Certain breeds take their names from their countries of origin, or of association, as in the labrador, a breed of retriever originally developed in Labrador, a large peninsula (from Latin paene ‘almost’ and insula ‘island’) in eastern Canada. Other dogs whose names derive fairly straightforwardly from their places of origin are the Great Dane (from Denmark), the Spaniel (from Old French espaignol ‘Spanish’), and the dalmatian (from Dalmatia, an area of former Yugoslavia, now part of Croatia and Montenegro). Alsatian is another eponym, used for the dog also known as the German shepherd—a name that is modelled on the German name for the species: deutscher Schäferhund. Alsatian is the adjectival form of Alsatia, the name for an area bordering Germany and Switzerland, which is now Alsace, part of France. The Rottweiler, or properly rottweiler Hund, is so called because it is from Rottweil, a town in Baden-Württemberg in Germany. Dobermann, or Dobermann Pinscher, is also an eponym, though in this case it is named after a German dog-breeder called Ludwig Dobermann. The origins of Pinscher are less clear—it may derive from an area of north-western Austria called Pinzgau. An alternative theory is that it is related to the verb pinch—perhaps a reference to the dog’s docked tail—but this is hard to square with the word’s German origins.
Names based on appearance are less common: greyhound may seem to be an obvious example, but this actually derives from Old English grig, meaning ‘bitch’—the switch to grey is based on a folk-etymological association with the better-known colour term, and the fact that some greyhounds are indeed grey. But while greyhounds have nothing to do with the colour grey, grizzly bears, which are brown, do. The word grizzly is from the French word gris ‘grey’, and refers to the white tips on the ends of their fur. You may have thought that they were called grizzly bears because of their ferocious appearance and nature, but grizzly is unrelated to grisly—which is from Old English grislic ‘terrifying’. Even so, they are not recommended as family pets. A dog that probably was named for its colour is collie, an alternative form of coaly—an adjective used to mean ‘covered in coal-dust’ or ‘black as coal’. The corgi’s diminutive size is captured in its name, which is the Welsh for ‘dwarf dog’, from Welsh cor ‘dwarf’ and ci ‘dog’. While corgis are undoubtedly small, it is harder to see the connection between the shih-tzu and a lion (the name derives from Chinese shizi ‘lion’). The similarity becomes a little clearer if, instead of picturing a lion prowling the grasslands of Africa, we think of the stylized representations found in oriental art.
Other breeds formerly served their human masters as hunting dogs; their particular skills are reflected in the names they have been given. The terrier was trained to flush out vermin, especially badgers, rabbits, and foxes, from their underground burrows. The name derives from the Latin terrarius ‘earthly’, a reference to their ability to dig underground. The animal’s relentless persistence (or doggedness) in pursuit of its prey has led to the metaphorical use of terrier to refer to someone who is similarly tenacious or persistent. The Jack Russell terrier takes its name from a renowned breeder, a nineteenth-century clergyman whose fame led to the nickname ‘The Sporting Parson’. The retriever is also called after its use in flushing out game, rather than its ability to retrieve a stick thrown by its owner. Also named for its use as a hunting dog—specifically its role in digging out badgers—is the dachshund, from German dachs ‘badger’. Another hunting dog whose name is of German extraction is the poodle, originally Pudelhund, from the verb puddeln ‘to splash about’. This dog gets its name from its role as a water dog—one trained to retrieve waterfowl when hunting. The pointer is called after the distinctive pose it adopts when it detects quarry—pointing its nose and mouth towards the location of the hunted animal, standing stock still, and sometimes lifting one of its legs. Hunting with dogs is also the root of harass, now used of unwelcome sexual advances, since it is from the Old French verb harer, meaning ‘to set a dog upon’.
If your family pet is a horse, you may wish to engage in some equestrianism, from the Latin equus ‘horse’. A less impressive equine specimen was known to the Romans as a caballus—the term for a working horse, similar to the English nag or jade (a worn-out old horse, from which we get jaded)—which is the origin of French cheval and Spanish caballo. The Greek word for a horse was hippos, which survives in the personal names Philip and Philippa (meaning ‘horse lover’), and in hippopotamus ‘river-horse’.
A donkey was originally an ass; the word donkey was introduced as a colloquial name for this animal in the eighteenth century. The fact that it originally rhymed with monkey may indicate that it derives from the colour term dun; another suggestion is that it is from the personal name Duncan. The ass lies behind the word easel, a loanword from the Dutch version ezel. Because donkeys were used to carry heavy loads, this frame used for supporting paintings was named after the animal. A similar development is found in our use of the term clothes horse to refer to a wooden frame employed as a support for drying clothes.
Depending on the type of horse and your experience, there are various speeds at which you might choose to ride. Slightly faster than walking pace is the trot, from which we get on the trot ‘in succession’ and trot out, meaning produce a well-rehearsed piece of information. Speedier than the trot is the canter, which is named after the speed at which medieval pilgrims, like the collection of ‘sondry folk’ described by Chaucer, would ride on their journey to Canterbury—the location of the shrine of St Thomas à Becket. If you are feeling really confident you might risk a gallop; this word is a French borrowing which was adopted in the sixteenth century, when it replaced the variant form wallop used in the Middle Ages in works like Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur: ‘He rode a grete walop tylle he com to the fountain.’
Since horse-riding was a popular pastime during the British rule in India, a number of the relevant terms are of Indian extraction. The jodhpurs worn on the legs when riding are called after the city of that name in western India, where they are worn as part of daily attire. The gymkhana, an equestrian meeting that involves jumping fences, egg-and-spoon races on horseback, and other events for children, is based on the Urdu word gendkanah, meaning ‘racket court’, altered by association with the etymologically unrelated gymnastics. More ambitious than the gymkhana is the steeplechase, a cross-country course with ditches and hedges, which gets its name from the use of a distant steeple to mark the end of the race. Riding for pleasure is also known as hacking, from the use of hack to refer to an everyday horse for general-purpose riding. This word is a shortening of Hackney, a borough of East London, where pasture was provided for horses. It is also the source of Hackney carriage—originally a cart drawn by a horse, but now a general word for a taxi.
Instead of actually doing the riding, you may prefer to attend a race meeting and perhaps even have a flutter. If you’re feeling lucky, you might choose to back an outsider or a long shot; a more cautious approach would be to have an each-way bet—betting on your horse to place (finish in the top three or four) or make the frame (the wooden frame at racing events on which the top four names appear); alternatively, you could hedge your bets by placing a second bet to cover the first—this term derives from the function of a hedge as a form of defence or protection. For an informed decision, you should study the form sheet, which records past performances, and hope that the horse runs true to form; this is also the origin of the phrase have form, used of someone with a record of criminal convictions. But it’s not just the horse’s form that needs to be taken into consideration, there’s also the issue of the particular racecourse; the idea that horses are better suited to some venues than others is enshrined in the saying horses for courses. The best way to find out how a particular horse will perform is to ask the animal itself, or get the information straight from the horse’s mouth. But be careful not to be accused of looking a gift horse in the mouth, a proverb which refers to the practice of trying to determine a horse’s age by inspecting its teeth (from which we get the expression long in the tooth). The idea behind this phrase is that one should gratefully accept a gift without attempting to assess its value.
Horse-Racing
A horse that is expected to win is known as a banker or dead cert (short for dead certain); a shoo-in may sound like a safe bet, but this term was originally used of a horse winning a race that had been rigged. Since the horse won by such a clear margin, it appeared as if the other racers were shooing it over the finish line. To be avoided are the also ran, that fails to place, and the bismarck—a favourite that is expected to flop.
Whichever you choose, you’ll be hoping that your horse goes the distance and stays the course, and doesn’t end up a non-starter—a horse that fails to run at all. Although pole position is now more commonly associated with motor-racing, where it refers to the front position on the starting grid, this term originated in horse-racing, referring to the pole used to indicate the most favourable starting location next to the inner rail. If your horse is comfortably ahead as it comes down the final straight (US final stretch), it may be that the horse will win hands down—a reference to the way a jockey drops his hands to relax the reins when victory seems assured. A runner whose lead is so great that the horse can walk to the finish is said to have earned a walkover, a term now used of any one-sided contest or easily achievable goal.
If things are close and the race is going to the wire (a reference to an imaginary wire marking the finish line), prepare yourself for a dead heat (a heat, or race, in which two or more horses reach the winning post at the same time) or a blanket finish—when the horses finish so close together you could throw a blanket over them. If your horse wins by a nose or finishes in the money, you can return to the bookmaker (or bookie) in triumph. This term derives from the practice of recording bets in a notebook (hence to open or keep a book). If, however, the race is unexpectedly won by a horse that no one has backed, this is a turn-up (originally referring to the turning up of a particular card in a game of chance, and hence an unexpected or surprise occurrence) for the bookmakers, or a turn-up for the books—a phrase now used to refer to any unexpected slice of good fortune.
Another popular pursuit for animal lovers is a visit to the local bird reserve to huddle up in a hide with fellow birdwatchers, birders, and twitchers. The latter group are birdwatchers whose main objective is to collect sightings of rare birds; one theory is that the name derives from a tendency to get twitchy when the wind gets up, thereby increasing the likelihood of birds being blown off course. Twitchers are also known as tickers, from the practice of ticking off such sightings on a list. Those only interested in making rare sightings are rather looked down upon by serious ornithologists—the term for scientists who engage in the study of birds. This word derives from the Greek ornis ‘bird’, cognate with the Old English word earn ‘eagle’. The Latin word for bird, avis, is the root of avian ‘pertaining to birds’, aviary ‘large enclosure for birds’, as well as aviation, the term for the science of powered flight. The word bird is of Old English origin, although it referred more specifically to a little bird. The general term for a bird in Old English was fugol, the ancestor of modern English fowl, now used of domestic cocks and hens.
In addition to being an enjoyable pursuit, birdwatching can be useful for fortune-telling—as is apparent from the etymology of auspicious ‘conducive to success, favourable’. This word has its origins in Latin auspex (from avis and specere ‘to observe’), the name given by the Romans to a person who predicted the future by observing the flight of birds. Something that is auspicious is thus an event that has been given the auspex’s blessing—the root of the phrase under the auspices of. A similar origin lies behind the phrase augurs well, which originally referred to a positive prediction by an augur—an alternative term for the auspex; this word is the source of inaugurate, referring to a consecration or installation carried out having taken omens from the flight of birds.
Birds
Many of the names of common birds are self-evident: try identifying a blackbird to a child and observe the withering look of scorn you receive. This name replaced the older ouzel, first recorded in Old English and later spelled woosell, as in Shakespeare’s reference to the ‘Woosell cock, so blacke of hewe / With Orange tawny bill’ in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. This word may be connected to the Latin word for the same bird—merula—the source of another name for the bird, merle, used mostly in Scots dialect poetry. John Florio’s English–Italian dictionary of 1598, A Worlde of Wordes, adds a further name in the black-mack found in his entry for Merula: ‘a birde called a black-mack, and owzell, a mearle, a black bird’.
The name of the robin may appear less obvious until we recall that it was earlier known as the redbreast. It was only later that the bird acquired the first name—initially Robert, and later Robin. The earliest recorded English name for the bird is the ruddock—still used in some dialects—which is derived from the colour term red. In the case of other birds the connection between name and markings is no longer so apparent. But once you know that the Old English word steort meant ‘tail’, you will immediately understand where the redstart got its name. Similarly, the redpoll takes its name from a Germanic word poll ‘head’, which still survives in the name of the poll tax. The wheatear sounds as if it’s connected to ears of wheat but in fact this is a corruption—or a cleaning-up—of an earlier form whiteeres, or white-arse, a reference to the colour of the bird’s rump. The origins of the bunting are unclear, although some scholars have suggested a link with the Scots word buntin ‘plump’, or with the Welsh bontinog ‘large-buttocked’—neither of which is especially flattering. The second element of magpie is from the Latin name for the bird: pica. The first element of the name is a later addition taken from the girl’s name Margery, reflecting a tendency for birds to acquire personal names. Other examples are the jackdaw (formerly the daw), house martin, jenny wren, and, of course, the robin.
Additional sources of birds’ names are features of behaviour—flight, song, and feeding habits. If you’ve ever observed the speedy, darting flight of the swift, you will have no difficulty imagining how it acquired that name. The well-known tree-drilling habits of the woodpecker are also plainly the source of its name. The chaffinch is christened after its habit of searching out grain from the chaff, or husks of grain, found in barns. The name of the linnet is borrowed from Old French linette, itself from the word lin, referring to the flax plant from which the bird gets its food. The brambling gets its name from its close association with bramble bushes; the nuthatch is probably related to the verb hack, referring to the bird’s practice of clamping nuts within the bark of the tree so as to hack at them with its beak.
The nightingale is most famous for its song; knowing that the Old English verb galan meant ‘to sing’ helps explain why the nocturnal nightingale is so called. Also christened for their singing are the serins, whose name goes back to the classical word siren, the name of the mermaids that lured sailors to their doom with their song, best known from Homer’s Odyssey. Other names represent attempts to reflect the song itself, using onomatopoeia (from a Greek word meaning ‘word-making’). In the case of the cuckoo and hoopoe this connection is still apparent, since the names remain accurate approximations of the birds’ calls. In other instances the pronunciation and reference of the name have diverged considerably; pigeon, for instance, is from Latin pipio, coined by the Romans to describe the cheeping sound of a young bird—a long way from the cooing sound associated with the pigeon. The word rook is an attempt to render the bird’s harsh call; it goes back to the same root as the Greek verb meaning ‘to croak’. The chattering sound of birds of the chat family gives them their name; in the case of the stonechat, its call was thought to resemble the sound of two stones being knocked together.
If you are more interested in birds of prey than songbirds, you might try your hand at hawking—ensuring you are wearing a substantial glove, of course. Hawking comes with a variety of abstruse terminology; mastery of the complex lexicon associated with the noble pursuits of hawking and hunting was a badge of social status in the Middle Ages. According to medieval legend, these terms were first introduced by Sir Tristram, one of the knights of King Arthur’s celebrated round table; in his fifteenth-century Arthurian epic, Le Morte d’Arthur, Thomas Malory praised such ‘goodly tearmys’ whereby ‘men of worshyp may discover a jentylman frome a yoman and a yoman frome a vylayne’. So if you’re thinking of giving hawking a go, or just want to avoid being mistaken for a villain (in its earlier sense of ‘peasant’), be sure to learn the following goodly terms.
Hawking
If you’re serious about taking up this hobby, you can get a good sense of the practicalities involved in training a bird for hunting from Helen Macdonald’s moving memoir H is for Hawk, where she recounts her attempts to train a goshawk, a bird which takes its name from the Old English gos ‘goose’ and hafoc ‘hawk’. The Old French name for the bird, austruchier, gives us the modern English term for a keeper of goshawks: austringer. The goshawk should not be confused with the similar-looking peregrine falcon, whose name is taken from the Latin peregrinus ‘foreign’ or ‘pilgrim’ (per ‘through’ and ager ‘field’), so called because they were trapped by falconers when on migration (a kind of pilgrimage), rather than being taken from the nest. An adult bird caught in the wild is known as a haggard; such birds were considered more difficult to tame and more likely to go astray: this is the sense invoked in Othello’s reference to Desdemona being proved a haggard in Shakespeare’s play. In modern English this word describes someone worn out and exhausted by anxiety. A juvenile bird caught while on migration is known as a passage hawk or passager, while a bird taken from the nest is termed an eyas. Deriving ultimately from Latin nidus ‘nest’, the spelling of this word is the result of a false division, by which a neyas was mistakenly understood to be an eyas; a similar process lies behind words like adder, apron, and umpire (compare earlier nadder, napron, and noumpere ‘no peer’). A hawk whose talons have been removed is called a poltroon, a word which survives today in the sense ‘worthless wretch’ or ‘coward’.
If you want to fit in with your fellow falconers, you need to be careful how you employ the term falcon, since amongst the initiated it is only used of the female bird. This word derives from Latin falco, from a word for ‘sickle’, inspired by the similarity of this blade to the bird’s hooked talons. The male bird is known as the tercel, from Latin tertius ‘third’. This name may be a reference to its diminutive size, since the male is approximately a third smaller than the female. An alternative theory, however, links the name to the belief that the third egg in a clutch would produce a male bird. Goshawks belong to the genus known by the Latin term accipiter, from a root meaning ‘swift feather’. These short-winged hawks are also termed ignoble birds for their tendency to chase after (or rake) their quarry in a rather inelegant manner. By contrast, long-winged hawks, which seize their quarry in a single graceful swoop, are considered noble birds.
But sounding like a competent falconer is more than simply knowing the correct names for the birds. You’ll also need to master the proper way to refer to its various parts and behaviour. Reference to the bird’s wings, claws, or tail will immediately expose you as a novice; to an experienced falconer these are sails, pounces, and train. Confusingly, the part of the bird’s leg between thigh and foot is known as an arm. There are no fewer than three terms to describe the way the bird wipes its beak after feeding: feaking, sewing, or sniting. When the bird beats its wings impatiently in an attempt to fly off the perch, it is bating (from the French battre ‘beat’). The sport’s gentlemanly origins are evident from its genteel euphemisms: hawks don’t defecate, they mute, while vomiting is casting or gleaming—perhaps the result of gurgiting ‘choking after having taken too large a mouthful’—a problem not limited to hawks. Hearty drinking by a hawk is known as bousing—again, a characteristic it shares with some of its human handlers. A hawk that is in the proper condition to hunt is in yarak, from a Persian word meaning ‘power’ or ‘strength’.
The tools of the falconer’s trade include jesses, leather straps that fit through the anklets and the cadge (related to cage: a wooden frame on which the hawk is carried to the field); even the leather ring used to attach a bell to the bird’s leg—enabling it to be tracked when in flight—has its own term: bewet. The creance, a long line which prevents the half-trained hawk from flying away, takes its name from Old French créance ‘trust, confidence’ (also the source of modern English credence), since it was used to restrain a bird that could not yet be fully trusted to return to the handler.
