A bulldozer is named after the animal with a powerful, determined shove.
A papal bull has nothing to do with taureans, nor does—though it would be a good guess—a bully, which began in the 1500s as a term of endearment to a male friend.
Taurus is the second sign of the zodiac and also the constellation the Bull, named after one tamed by the mythical Greek hero Jason (he of the Golden Fleece).
Taurine is an amino acid containing sulphur that’s key to the metabolism of fats. Its name owes to its originally being extracted from ox bile.
A bullhorn is, in North America, a megaphone.
A bull bar is a strong metal grille on the front of a motor vehicle that protects against impact damage (similar to a cowcatcher on a train).
A bullpen is an exercise area for baseball players or a holding area where prisoners are held before a court hearing.
A bull fiddle is a double bass, a bullwhip has a long heavy lash that loudly cracks the silence, and a bulrush or bullrush is one of various waterside plants, from “bull”—large or coarse.
Bull-nosed denotes a rounded edge or end. A bull ring, vs. a bullring where bullfights occur, is placed in a bull’s very sensitive nose, for a rope, to lead and control him. If the bull is especially aggressive, a halter may also be used. (By the way, bulls have been known to carry a grudge.) Cows very rarely require a ring or halter, having much milder dispositions than their bull-headed mates.
A bull session involves a group of people—sometimes all-female—talking about something.
A bull’s-eye is the center of the target in archery and darts, also a big peppermint-flavored candy. It used to mean a small round window in a ship; in French, oeil de boeuf (bull’s eye) is still a round window, not necessarily small, and usually on a building’s upper story.
Chief Sitting Bull was the spiritual leader and tribal chief of the Hunkpapa Lakota Sioux who resisted repressive US government policies against his people, including concentrating them in camps or “reservations.”
No Flies On You
This expression goes back to cattle ranching in the USA and Australia and was first noted in the mid 19th century. Plainly put, individual cattle and horses that were more active and mobile than their sedentary counterparts attracted fewer flies.
Caution: In some cultures, to tell individuals they have no flies on them, though meant as a compliment, is apt to be taken as impertinent or insulting. Interesting and sad that the worse a society treats animals, the more apt its people are to be insulted by animal expressions and comparisons. Mahatma Gandhi pointed out that the degree of a nation’s moral generosity parallels its treatment of animals.
Bull Critters
A bullock is a castrated male raised for beef, but a bullhead is a small fish with a wide flattened head and spiny fins—or an American freshwater catfish (go figure).
A bullfrog is a very big frog with a deep, resounding croak. A bull snake is a big constricting North American serpent. And a bull ant is a big Australian ant with a powerful sting and large jaws.
A bull terrier is a cross between a bulldog and a terrier, while a bull trout is simply a North American trout found in cold rivers and lakes.
A bullfinch is a stocky bird with mostly black and gray feathers and a white rear; the male boasts a pink breast.
The forerunner of tauromachy or bullfighting was the ancient Cretan sport of bull jumping, practiced by acrobatic young people of both sexes who often literally took the bull by the horns, then vaulted over it.
Gravy
“Gravy” may come from the mistaken reading of a French word derived from the Latin granum, or grain. It means both the fat and juices exuded from cooking meat and the sauce made from same. It became slang for easy or found money, while a gravy train is an easy way to make lots of money. In the first half of the 20th century, to board the gravy train and board the gravy boat were popular phrases; an actor in the 1940s stated, “Once you get on the Hollywood gravy boat, it is no trick to make money.”
Today the surviving expression is to ride the gravy train. According to linguistics PhD Rosemarie Ostler, since the 1880s the expression has meant “to gain an undeserved benefit or achieve something at the expense of others.”
Gravy may also refer to freebies or extra benefits, the extra often summed up with “The rest is gravy.”
P.S. Barbecue comes from the Spanish barbacoa, one of countless corruptions of a Native American word, in this case via the Arawaks of the Caribbean whose word meant a wooden grill for cooking meat. (Like the Caribs and other tribes of the region, the Arawaks are virtually extinct.)
Bullish Expressions
To be like a bull in a china shop—something seen literally only in movies—is to act clumsily, tactlessly, or destructively in a delicate situation.
“Like a bull at a gate” means hasty, thoughtless, and overly forceful.
To “hit the bull’s-eye” is to achieve one’s exact aim or attain a great success or make the correct decision.
To “be within a bull’s roar” of something is to be very close to something.
To be a “red rag or flag to a bull” signifies something that makes someone very angry or excited, via the incorrect belief that bulls go mad because of the color red rather than the motion of waving.
To “shoot the bull”—or the breeze—originated in the United States and means to have a casual conversation.
“Bull” is criminal slang for a policeman or prison guard.
“Bullsh*t” is a strong word for nonsense because it references a strong animal.
Horns
To take the bull by the horns (just try it!) is to deal effectively with a tough or unpleasant situation. To be on the horns of a dilemma indicates a choice between two unpleasant alternatives and not being sure which is less negative. To draw in one’s horns may refer to deciding to spend less money or drawing back from a situation and pondering it before taking action. This expression may derive not from bulls but from snails, which have an eye on the tip of each horn. When a snail senses danger or feels threatened, it withdraws its horns and then its whole body into its shell (during times of drought, snails, which require moisture, may stay in there for weeks at a time).
Ox. . .
Because of its size and strength, the ox long ago became something of a symbol for brute strength and lack of intelligence, as in expressions like “You big ox” and “You dumb ox.” (Female oxen are seldom referenced.)
Oxtail soup is still popular in some quarters and was once believed to lend the consumer some of an ox’s strength.
Ox tongue is both the animal’s tongue used as meat and a member of the daisy family with prickly hairs and yellow dandelion-like flowers.
Oxlip is a woodland plant with dependent yellow flowers. It’s a member of the primula family that includes primroses, cowslips, and polyanthuses. A false oxlip is the hybrid of a primrose and a cowslip.
An ox-eye daisy has big white flowers with yellow centers.
An oxpecker isn’t what you think, but a brown African bird related to starlings that feeds on parasites infesting the skins of big grazing mammals.
An oxbow is the U-shaped collar of an ox’s yoke, also the loop in a river created by a horseshoe bend. An oxbow lake is curved via a horseshoe bend in a river that no longer flows around the bend in the main stream’s loop. (Curiously, the classic 1942 film The Ox-Bow Incident, about lynching in the Old West, starring Henry Fonda, was renamed Strange Incident for the British market.)
First a Saxon military site, later home to one of the world’s leading universities, Oxford, England, was named after a ford where oxen routinely crossed. Back then (ca. 900 CE) bridges were much rarer than fords—shallow places in streams or rivers that could be crossed on foot or in a usually horse-drawn vehicle.
Olly, Olly, Oxen Free, the name of a children’s game akin to Hide and Seek, never had a thing to do with oxen. It’s an English corruption of its German name: Alle, Alle, Auch Sind Frei—mean
ing Everyone, Everyone, Is Also Free.
Chewing the Fat
Today, “chewing the fat” refers to casual conversation or gossip. But in the 1800s it was British slang for grumbling or complaining (the related “chewing the rag” is now obsolete). After the expression arrived in North America it took on the more positive meaning of chatting informally.
Originally, the chewing wasn’t necessarily verbal and could indicate someone forming words while thinking of something else. As in Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure (published 1623), wherein Angelo cites his habit of mouthing empty prayers: “. . . heaven in my mouth,/As if I did but only chew his name,/And in my heart the strong and swelling evil/Of my conception . . . .”
A cow chewing her cud can parallel someone chewing fat, tobacco, or gum. Further American slang featuring chewing includes: to chew over an idea, to chew someone out, and the practically extinct chewing match, which in the 1950s and ’60s meant a loud argument.
There’s also to “chew somebody’s ear off,” as in “yak-yak-yak,” which has nothing to do with a yak (the large, shaggy ox), whose name comes from the Tibetan gyag.
More literally, among the Inuit (formerly, Eskimos) idle hours were sometimes spent chewing animal hides in order to soften them. (FYI, muktuk is the skin and blubber of a whale, eaten as food by the Inuit. Flense is a rarely heard verb meaning to slice the skin or fat from a whale.)
Bringing Home the Bacon
In England in the Middle Ages (till about the 15th century), pork was not only the most commonly available and relatively affordable meat, it was for most people the only meat they ever partook of. But pre-electricity and refrigeration, storage was a problem. Less so with bacon, whose smoking and salting process meant it didn’t have to be eaten right away. One side of bacon could suffice a family an entire season. And a small bit of bacon made pease much more palatable. (The latter, made from yellow split peas, was for centuries the staple of the average English diet; the omnipresent meats seen in period films were reserved for royalty and the nobility.)
In the pre-Independence American colonies pork was rare—pigs were introduced to the Americas from Europe—so the Native American who could “bring home the bacon” was a man of means. To show off his status, he would invite some male friends to visit and literally chew the fat.
In Britain and the States, rural contests involving catching a greased pig or excelling at some sport or show of strength often yielded a prize pig to the winner, who—what else—brought home the bacon. Oink, oink.
Hamming It Up
This expression comes from “ham-fatter,” which first appeared in 1879 in America Revisited by George Sala, who wrote, “Every American who does not wish to be thought ‘small potatoes’ or a ‘ham-fatter’ or a ‘corner loafer’ is carefully ‘barbed’ and fixed up in a hair-dressing salon every day.” In other words, if a male—every other American—didn’t wish to be thought a nobody, low-class, or unemployed, he went to a barbershop (daily, yet).
Like other performers, musicians were deemed low-class. They were nicknamed ham-fatters because trombone players often kept a piece of ham fat handy to grease their instruments. (A popular minstrel song was titled “The Hamfat Man.”)
By the 20th century, ham fat had shortened to ham and signified a second-rate actor or a vaudevillian. Later in the century it came to include overly dramatic performances (“hamming it up”) and productions. As in Raymond Chandler’s 1942 novel The High Window: “Don’t feed me the ham. I’ve been in pictures. I’m a connoisseur of ham.”
A 1970s British print ad for ham converted the landmark “Hollywood” sign to “Hammywood,” and actor Dudley Moore said Sir John Gielgud called Laurence Olivier, who relished acting in false noses and accents and often accepted big money for grade-B Hollywood projects, Sir Ham-on-Rye.
Today being a ham covers any type of showing off, thespic or otherwise.
Hams
Besides the primary culinary meaning and secondary one of over-obvious actors, hams are the back of the human thigh or the buttocks and thighs. Hammy describes a thick, solid hand or thigh. Ham-fisted means clumsy or awkward, via large hands (alluding to sizeable pre-sliced hams) and thick fingers.
The hamstring is the large tendon behind a quadruped’s hock; hamstrings are the five tendons at the back of a human knee. To hamstring somebody is to cut their hamstrings or, less gruesomely, to thwart or severely restrict someone.
A radio ham is an amateur radio operator. Hambone usually describes a hammy actor.
Ham (and the obsolete hom) comes from Olde English, referring to the back of the knee and based on a Germanic root meaning to be crooked.
Deviled Ham
The William Underwood Company was a leading food supplier to Union troops during the US Civil War (1861–1865). In 1868 the company’s kitchen combined ground ham with mustard, cayenne pepper and other spices, in a process called deviling. In 1870 Underwood patented its red devil logo, now the oldest food trademark in the United States. To cook something with hot spices was to devil, a long-established if not widely popular method of preparation, as spices were luxury items.
Dr. Johnson’s official biographer, James Boswell (1740–1795), described his passion for “deviled bones,” apparently a supper of spicy spare ribs.
Swine
Swine, from the Germanic swin, related to sow, doesn’t have the same negative connotation in Britain as in the States, where to call someone a swine is worse than calling them a pig, which doesn’t usually have moral implications.
Philologist Mario Pei explained, “Swine versus pig is an example of an equivalent word taking on unwarrantedly dark associations. With a pig we associate jollity, excessive love of eating, and down-to-earthiness. . . . The long I in swine, contrasting with the short i in pig, gives that word a nastier edge.”
To cast one’s pearls before swine is to waste what is worthwhile on those who won’t appreciate it (similar to caviar to the general, that is, general public). The Bible warns, “Do not give what is holy to dogs; nor cast your pearls before swine lest they trample them under their feet, and turn and tear you to pieces.”
Swine fever is an intestinal viral illness of pigs. Swine flu is a type of porcine influenza and a human influenza caused by a virus, with notable outbreaks in 1976 and 2009. The former flu is rarely transferred from pigs to humans.
Going the Whole Hog
“The Love of the World, or Hypocrisy Detected” was a 1779 poem by William Cowper in which he described Muslim leaders trying to figure out what part of a hog was edible (Muslims and Orthodox Jews are enjoined against eating pork). “But for one piece they thought it hard, from the whole hog to be debarred.” It was the first print reference to “whole hog.”
“Going the whole hog,” denoting a strong commitment, was a slogan in Andrew Jackson’s 1828 run for president. It was the first campaign involving ordinary Americans rather than aristocrats. Jackson defeated incumbent Federalist John Quincy Adams by stressing government by the average man rather than a political elite. In 1832, he again campaigned with “Go the whole hog!” and was reelected. His followers created the modern Democratic Party.
An 1852 book titled Household Words noted, “When a Virginia butcher kills a pig, he is said to ask his customers whether they will ‘go the whole hog’. . . in such case, he sells at a lower price than if they pick out the prime joints only.” In pre-refrigeration days, a whole hog, ca. 200 pounds, was a serious commitment.
Another meaning for whole hog derived from the slang “hog,” a British shilling or American dime. At the time, most non-millionaires would have deemed it reckless to spend a whole shilling or dime at once. Variations on going the whole hog included to proceed the whole pork, go the entire swine, go the entire animal, or just “go the whole.” Current usage typically drops “the,” such as “She’s going whole hog for self-improvement.”
Living High on the Hog
The most in-demand, expensive cuts of a hog (e.g., roasts and c
hops) are located high on its body, hence a bigger income is required to live high on the hog (a phrase that may have created more than a few vegetarians). Average people have traditionally consumed the rest of the hog, from its feet to the ears, tongue, and brains.* In 19th-century America pigs were easily the nation’s #1 meat source (cows were more expensive to raise and transport).
Americans in the 1800s ate a surprising quantity of salt pork, which kept well and was more practical for those living in isolated regions—also for travelers. European visitors of the period often commented that Americans seemed to exist mostly on meat.
Variants of living high on the hog include living high off the hog and eating high off the hog. With the trend toward healthier eating—specifically, less mammal meats—the popularity of hog expressions has tapered off.
*The brains of pigs and calves, pressed with jelly, are made into headcheese, called brawn in Britain, derived from a Germanic word meaning the fleshy part of the leg. Primitive cultures often believed ingesting brains increased one’s intelligence. A tribe of New Guinea cannibals in the 1900s found out otherwise, reserving human brains for consumption by women and children (apparently the men thought themselves smart enough). It was a no-brainer to figure out why women and children soon after started dying off.
Hog. . .
Hog has become synonymous with greedy, and “to hog” is to take more than one’s fair share or to hoard. Road hogs take up more than their share of the road. Hog-wild is a North American expression meaning overly enthusiastic.
Hogwash now means nonsense but when originated in the 1400s it was kitchen swill to feed the pigs. (Until fairly recently, the French considered corn more fit for porcine consumption than people’s—odd, in a nation that doesn’t mind ingesting snails, frogs, and horsemeat!)
A hogfish is a big, brightly colored fish—with thick lips and strong teeth—mostly found in the western Atlantic. A hognose snake is a non-venomous burrowing American snake with an upturned snout. When frightened, it becomes inflated, thereby presumably frightening the other party.
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