Taboo replacements

[Rick Mc Callister]

	Wasn't it more a case of initially distinguishing between 2 types
of horses: caballus, a large lumbering draft horse of horthern European
origin as opposed to equus a swift cavalry horse originating in the
Caucasus or Caspian region, two different subspecies --at least according
to a couple of books on horses I've seen.
	In that vein, it would correspond to the distinction between
"horse" and "pony."
	<Caballus> won out because not too many people ever came into
contact with an <equus>, at least on an everyday basis.
	Curiously, in Spanish while a stallion is a caballo, a mare is a
yegua < equa [or something like that].
	And zebra is supposedly from Old Spanish ecebra, ezevra, etc. said
to be a derivative from equus plus some ending.
	Pony is related to the name of the horse goddess Epona, right? And
so, is cognate to equus, isn't it?

>In a message dated 4/8/99 9:07:20 PM Mountain Daylight Time,
>nicholas.widdows at traceplc.co.uk writes:

>>What would constitute evidence for this, and for "brown" or "honey-eater"
>>over the ursa/arktos/rakshasa root, being a taboo replacement, as opposed to
>>a common-or-garden lexical innovation?

>Exactly.  After all, there was no taboo making the Romance languages shift
>their work for "horse" from the Latin derivative of *ekwos to "caballus".

>Aparently it was simply a shift, as if we'd stopped using "horse" and
>substituted "nag" or "glue-bait" or "cayuse".