Where did the words "pork" and "beef" come from??

[kentuck]

https://www.merriam-webster.com/video/words-from-the-norman-invasion

[MineralMan]

1. English is an interesting hodge-podge.

That is all.

Yes, waiter, I'll have the ribs of pig, please.

[muriel_volestrangler]

4. Though 'pig' itself is rare in Old English

The only known instance of it from before 1250 is 'pig bread' ("picbred&quot meaning 'acorn'. And from that date, 'pig' seems to have started as meaning a young pig; 'swine' and 'hog' are both better known in Old English (with 'hog' maybe meaning specifically a castrated boar raised for meat, at first).

[left-of-center2012]

2. So, they entered England from France ...

But where did they come from originally?

pork (n.)
c. 1300 ... directly from Latin “porcus” http://www.etymonline.com/word/pork

beef (n.)
c. 1300 ... from Latin “bovem” http://www.etymonline.com/word/beef

[Igel]

7. And before that ...

*gwou- 'cow', from which we also get 'kine' as well as bous (Greek) and things like Russian govno 'cow shit' or Czech hovadina 'beef', Sanskrit gaus 'cow'. Notice that some languages have what appears to be a word from 'horn' for 'cow'.

And *pork'- 'pig', whence Latin porcus but also Old English fearh 'pig' and Russian porosyonok 'piglet' and I think it's Czech prasata 'piglets'. And a porpoise is a pig-fish, porc-+peis (< piscis). While 'fearh' is dead and buried, we still have 'farrow'.

There also probably cognates I don't know in other languages. but even with the Gutturalwechsel in *pork'- I don't think I've ever seen any cognate in really eastern IE. It runs from the west through to Slavic and seems to stop dead, unlike *gwou- which seems to be everywhere. Makes you wonder if PIE didn't run into swine only after it started to spread and move west while cattle domestication in the Middle East allowed for easy import up through the Caucasus or through later Sogdiana. But the PIE etymologies get us at least as far from Latin as Latin is from us in time depth.

Of course, *gwou- would be a prime candidate for Nostratic, given its extent in PIE. Except that *gwou- starts sounding an awful lot like the sound a cow makes, meaning it might be onomatopeic. *pork'- may have been an early borrowing into western IE from some now defunct language. But both those are speculation, naturally.

As for Norman-English, there's a whole host of manor/village words that smack of French influence. Some are less common, like pullet (poulet), others standard (mutton/mouton).

[GulfCoast66]

9. Thank you

Post like this is what keeps me coming back to DU. If you do not mind me asking is this knowledge a hobby or your profession?

[chowder66]

3. That is sooooo weird. I was thinking about that very thing a few weeks ago. Lol.

[ProudLib72]

5. It's all tref

Interesting etymology of the Yiddish word "tref" is that it is derived from the Hebrew "terefah" literally meaning "torn" (by a prey animal), but has come to mean anything that is not kosher.

And since Yiddish is a lot older than English (started in the Rhine valley in 8th century), we can rightly say that pig was tref before it was pork.

[mitch96]

6. Shoot, and I thought it was named after a Roman swine merchant..

"Porkus Aurelius"

I know, back in the box,mitch

[Cairycat]

8. On the hoof

the word is Old English. On the plate, from the French.

[WinkyDink]

10. I used to teach this (h.s.). Generalizing, the animal is Anglo-Saxon; the food term is Norman (Fr.).

Or what post #8 says!