Wapiti, elk and moose

[Wilson Gray]

Me neither. FWIW, I trust Wikipedia. I've known "wapiti" since I was a
little kid (4th grade or even earlier; I was a freak for the Saint
Louis Zoo) and this is the first I've heard that it's an Inuit
(Eskimo) word. Do wapiti even live as far north as that?

-Wilson

On Sun, Sep 28, 2008 at 1:37 AM, Benjamin Barrett <gogaku at ix.netcom.com> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Benjamin Barrett <gogaku at IX.NETCOM.COM>
> Subject:      Wapiti, elk and moose
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> In passing, I caught several seconds of Rachael Ray's "La Belle Ville"
> of her "Rachel's Vacation" show.
>
> I'm not sure if I caught it correct, but I think she introduced
> wapiti, a dish served in a Montreal restaurant, as being the Inuit
> word for moose.
>
> Because moose (Alces alces) are known as elk in Europe while elk
> (Cervus canadensis) is a different species in NA, it's hard to keep
> track of it all, but Wikipedia gives wapiti as meaning Cervus
> canadensis and coming from Cree while saying that moose derives from
> Eastern Abnaki.
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wapiti
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elk
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moose
>
> My main interest was that I'd never heard wapiti actually in use. FWIW
> BB
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>



--
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

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org