5866 



Etymology of 



1404, Edward IV. " gave a license to pass over certain Cotteswolde 

 sheepe into Spain." These were the origin of the present merinoes, 

 a name which is a slight corruption of the Spanish marino^ and refers 

 to the original importation of the breed from " beyond the sea." 



Ox is the Anglo-Saxon oxa ; Danish, oxe ; Gothic, aulis. The 

 root will be found in the Icelandic aha ; Sueth., acka, to draw, which 

 is the same verb as is found in the Latin as ago, and in Greek as ayu. 

 The connexion existing betw^een these words points out to us the 

 primitive use of oxen for the yoke ; while the horse, as w^e have seen 

 that its names imply, was used for riding, or for war, but not for agri- 

 cultural purposes. 



Bull is identical with its Latin equivalent hos ; Greek, iSoi/j ; French, 

 hceuf ; words which are all formed from the root ho, imitative of the 

 loud bellowing of the animal. So, too, cotv — which in the Teutonic 

 languages appears as ko or kuh ; Persian, gau, kau ; Malabar, ko ; 

 Sanscrit, gou, ghau — is also a name imitative of the voice; and it is 

 curious that in Greek we have both the verbs Boxco and yo^w, expressive 

 of a loud and deep sound. Richardson suggests that cow is derived 

 from the Anglo-Saxon ceowan, to chew, from its habit of chewing the 

 cud ; but this very plausible conjecture is found to be unsupported 

 by the analogy of other languages. Professor Donaldson has some 

 interesting remarks upon the curious coincidence to be remarked, 

 throughout the Indo-Germanic languages, between the words which 

 express the idea of Imid and the names of the cattle which till it. 

 Thus, in Sanscrit, gaus means both cow and the earth ; and in this 

 latter sense we find the root in the Greek 7>7, yar^, and the German 

 gau, country. The same analogy may be traced, though not quite so 

 evidently, in the words related to hull. Kine is the plural of cow, 

 just as swine is the plural of soiv. 



In calf we have another instance of a w^ord which was originally 

 used as a general term, but which has been gradually restricted to an 

 individual case, although, indeed, we still speak of a hind's calf, or of 

 an elephant's calf Our word is the Anglo-Saxon cealf; Swedish, 

 kalf; Danish, calv ; German, kalh ; and it is akin to the Dutch verb 

 kalheii, to vomit, which comes from a root indicative of gaping, having 

 V its nearest English analogues in yawn and yean. Calf, therefore, pro- 

 perly means any offspring. Webster ingeniously accounts for the use 

 of this word to indicate part of the leg. A calf is, properly, as we 

 have said, any offspring : hence it comes to mean an offshoot or pro- 

 tuberance, and so has been applied to the protuberant part of the leg. 

 In the old expression, " calves of the lips," it is hard to say whether 



