31–40 of 42 posts
In the word "aurochs", the "aur" prefix is the same as German "ur" indicating beginning or origin. (To beer drinkers around the world it may be familiar in the name of Pilsner Urquell, the original pale lager. Quell means source.) So aurochs is literally "original ox". I don't think there is any other English word that preserves this prefix.
Thank you for the excellent light hearted, tongue-in-cheek, and informative article!
Fun. But missing references to the other well known but never used variety - the heifer. You know, as you drive through Montana and you say, "wow, what a cute heifer there, next to that ox". (And the driver forgets to steer) OT: I was standing next a few freely roaming cows last week, and I was reminded just how awesomely huge and powerful these animals are. I have never seen a `matador`, but it blows my mind that he…
> Oxen is the sole surviving old weak plural ending in -en I had heard that -en was a surviving "dual" suffix, I think in some presentation from Larry Wall (regexen anyone?) Given oxen were often used in pairs, the dual form survived. Alas I'm no linguist so I can't confirm this.
I hoped to see a paragraph on hexadecimal notation (eg: 0xbeef), alas we'll have to settle for Stack Overflow's [1] wisdom on this: > Short story: the 0 tells the parser it's dealing with a constant (and not an identifier/reserved word). Something is still needed to specify the number base: the x is an arbitrary choice. [1] https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2670639/why-are-hexadeci...
Lest we forget our lore: 0xDEADBEEF and (based on a true story!) 0xCAFEBABE.
Only "oxen", "children", "brethren" ? What about "VAXen" ?
That’s the utter ox.
I hoped to see a paragraph on hexadecimal notation (eg: 0xbeef), alas we'll have to settle for Stack Overflow's [1] wisdom on this: > Short story: the 0 tells the parser it's dealing with a constant (and not an identifier/reserved word). Something is still needed to specify the number base: the x is an arbitrary choice. [1] https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2670639/why-are-hexadeci...
Steers are preferred because they dress out nearly 70 lbs over heifers on average. They also beat bulls on average while being much more mild mannered, so it's worth the effort of gelding.
USDA publishes periodic reports on "Livestock Slaughter" if you would like more details.
In the word "aurochs", the "aur" prefix is the same as German "ur" indicating beginning or origin. (To beer drinkers around the world it may be familiar in the name of Pilsner Urquell, the original pale lager. Quell means source.) So aurochs is literally "original ox". I don't think there is any other English word that preserves this prefix.
They don't preserve it, but there's various modern academic words that use it, like urtext (sometimes with a hyphen) https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/urtext#English https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/ur-#Derived_terms
Fun. But missing references to the other well known but never used variety - the heifer. You know, as you drive through Montana and you say, "wow, what a cute heifer there, next to that ox". (And the driver forgets to steer) OT: I was standing next a few freely roaming cows last week, and I was reminded just how awesomely huge and powerful these animals are. I have never seen a `matador`, but it blows my mind that he…
They tend to be gentle animals except for the bulls. Don't wander into a pasture with a bull. Fortunately bulls are quite easy to identify when you know where to look :-)