four-footed males, females, and children

[Wilson Gray]

Once upon a time, people who had cattle as well as hat said, "a / one
head of beef cattle." But this was already dying out among those
unconcerned with this particular form of agribusiness at least as far
back as 1972. Calvert Watkins was unable to persuade most members of
his Intro Hittitie class at the LSA Summer Institute at UNC that there
was any reason to translate a recurring collocation of graphs as, e.g.
"ten head of cattle" as opposed to the simpler and at least as
transparent "ten cattle." Would one say, "ten head of sheep"? Of
course. Hence, it would be incorrect to say, "ten sheep." Not at all.
The defense rests.

Remember when milk trucks were drawn by horses wearing rubber shoes,
so as not to annoy the still-sleeping 'hood with the clip-clop of
regular shoes? When the milkman got out of the truck with a case of
deliveries, the horse fired itself up and strode to the next stop.
After making his last delivery, the milkman merely walked to the curb,
where his "carriage" awaited him, left the empty case, and picked up a
full one.

Somehow, motor-driven trucks were never able to learn to do this,
forcing the milkman to walk half a block or so back to dead machinery.

-Wilson
–––
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die"---a strange complaint to
come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-----
-Mark Twain



On Tue, Dec 9, 2008 at 4:07 PM, Mark Mandel <thnidu at gmail.com> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Mark Mandel <thnidu at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: four-footed males, females, and children
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> On Tue, Dec 9, 2008 at 3:59 PM, Ann Burlingham <ann at burlinghambooks.com> wrote:
>> On Mon, Dec 8, 2008 at 10:23 PM, Joel S. Berson <Berson at att.net> wrote:
>>> I have to say, Mark said it more clearly in fewer words:
>>>>Or, at least, cow[female] is much
>>>>better known than dog[male]
>>>
>>> That are the only grounds on which I can excuse Shortz.  (But he has
>>> exiled dog breeders and cow herders from his clientele.)
>>
>> I don't know - the use of "cow" to refer to other than female cattle
>> drives me crazy, and I grew up on a dairy farm (I still live there,
>> but we don't have dairy cattle any more - someone does raise beef
>> cattle, though).
>
> Is there a singular of "beef cattle"?
>
> I'm a lifelong city boy; milk used to come in bottles, and now it
> comes in cartons. I have both "cow"[female] and "cow"[nonspecific].
> How do you feel about "goose" and "duck": can they be generic for you,
> or are they exclusively female (vs. "gander" and "drake")?
>
> m a m
>
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>

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