Cowpies and Other Slang

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Carol Reed from Hudson, Wisconsin.

Hello, Carol. Welcome.

Thank you.

How can we help you today?

Well, I have a curious question. I was raised in northern Wisconsin on a farm, and all our life we referred to cow droppings as cow pies or horse droppings as horse biscuits, and I’m wondering what the connection between culinary and animal droppings is. Culinary terms and why we would use those in that way.

And several years ago, I edited a book for a gentleman who was writing about his family in southern Wisconsin and their role in the Civil War, and he used that term, and I could never document when that term came into usage. So if you can shed some light on that, too, that would be interesting.

So he was writing fiction from the period, and you were worried that there was an anachronism there with cow pie?

Yes.

I see. And I know there’s cow chip, and there’s buffalo chip, which is also not quite culinary, but along the line. So you’re wondering, first of all, why they are connected with food words.

Exactly. And a pie, other than its shape, doesn’t really resemble something we would put in the oven, and neither does a horse biscuit. I mean, unless they were cooked by some guy on some cattle drive, but I’m just curious.

Okay. You know, I have to tell you, I don’t know, Carol, if I would agree with that. A cow pie, to me, looks remarkably like just a brown meringue.

Well, maybe the way you cook, but…

The way I cook, for sure. If we forget what it’s made of and look at the shape and something solid formed from something that used to be liquid. And the same for the horse biscuit. Horse poo sometimes looks like a very tall biscuit that had a lot of baking powder. I don’t think this is a stretch. I don’t. I think there’s a visual similarity there that’s kind of obvious to anybody who thinks about food a lot, which I do.

Well, I’m thinking about Spanish, and you don’t refer to cow tacos.

Cow tortillas?

Well, I don’t know if the word is too naughty to say on the air in Spanish, but it translates as cow cake. So I see a common thread here, which I never thought about.

So you think about these kinds of things, do you, Carol?

I’ve just been curious because, you know, we spent a lot of time with the animals and raising animals. And, you know, we went barefoot in the pasture in the summers. And you had to avoid stepping in cow pies, which really looked more like spinach quiche than they do like brown meringue.

Oh, that’s nice. Thanks for the visual. Wonderful. You’ll never eat it again. Somebody should tell those cows to chew their cud better. But, you know, I just could never find when it was brought into common usage.

Sounds like you have some dogs. So you’ve been worrying about this editing decision for a very long time.

I have. This has been like 15 years.

Wow. And I have to let it go, but the book’s published.

Right. And so you ended up using cow pie in the book about the Civil War?

I suggested he didn’t use it because I wasn’t sure.

Right. And since he couldn’t really document it where it came from at the time, I mean, I’m sure it’s just one of those words that came into the dictionary at some point. But when you Google cow pie, you actually get a candy treat. You know, you get, it’s a, it’s not, you can’t find anything that refers to cow manure. You just find this, I don’t know, this cake with marshmallows between it is a cow pie in some areas of the country.

Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, right, right. It’s a funny name. And that’s another food thing.

Yes, yes, yes. That’s another funny food name that’s applied from something kind of gross. Sort of like lasagna comes from an Italian word that means chamber pot.

What? This may be the grossest call we’ve ever done.

Oh, we can do better, surely.

Or worse. You know, I am looking at the Oxford English Dictionary, which only has cow pie back to about, I can’t believe I’m even saying this, which only has cow pie back to about 1947.

Oh, surely it must be older. You would think cow pie would be much older than that. How old is that entry? Is that from 1989? I bet they answered that with no problem.

It is 1989.

Yeah. Well, somebody’s on the cow pie case, Carol.

Okay. So we may have some news for you in the future about that.

That sounds good. Thanks for calling. If we come up with anything that antedates it and proves that it could have been said during the Civil War, we’ll let you know.

Okay, that sounds good. And thanks very much.

Okay, super. Bye-bye.