Idiom question

[A. Maberry]

OED says "foal" is "properly one of the male sex, a colt; but is also used
where the sex is not specified, a colt or a filly". To me, any very young,
newly born in fact, horse is a foal. I leave it to someone with more
horse-sense to determine exactly when a foal becomes either a colt or a
filly because they're mostly all horses to me.

Allen
maberry at u.washington.edu

On Mon, 24 Jan 2000, A. Vine wrote:

> Laurence Horn wrote:
>
> > rooster/hen).  But the case of horses appears to be a counterexample:
> > filly is [+fem], colt usually [+male].  I wouldn't be surprised to find
> > that some people take colts to include fillies, though of course never vice
> > versa.  (I'm from New York City, so I don't have any valid intuitions
> > here--they're all just horses to me, big'uns and little'uns.)
> >
>
> Well, there is "foal".
>