Discussion Forum—A Way with Words, a fun radio show and podcast about language

I don't see that, Emmett.    Crownover  is correcting people, who might well be few.

Myself, I've yet seen any evidence that  Cattle  with   S   is  increasing.

Well it does spike in the stats, but the volume is still relatively not that significant.

heysuzen said
also bovine was used to keep our words 'clean' ... As in male bovine deification... ?

I've only heard of "holy cow", not "holy bull"  Maybe you meant defecation?.

Pesident Turman gave a talk to a garden club, and afterwards, the head of the club complained to Bess that Harry had used the term "chicken manure" in his talk, and suggested that Bess could convince him to say "fertilizer" instead.

Oh dear, Bess replied.  You have NO idea how hard it was to get him to say "manure"!

I'm not sure why shit is an "unclean" word.  About 80% of it is gut flora, our microbiome, which is responsible for most of our immunity to disease.

On a game show tonight, the question was "Are there more people or cows in Texas?"

The answer I got but IIRC, the celebrity didn't. is that there are more people.  My reasoning?  Everybody knows a lot of Texans are all hat, no cattle.

But as a backup, I decided that the number of *seers* might approximate the number of people, but only about half of all steers are cows.

Not many bulls, thanks to AI.  Texan politicians must be slingong steershit to their listeners instead of bullshit.

The singular would be: That’s a fine looking Bos taurus you have there, Farmer Brown.
And the plural would be: That’s a fine herd of Bos tauri you have there, Farmer Brown.

Would Farmer Brown be confused by that?  Bossie traditionally refers to a female that has come fresh at least once.