Why cow meat is called "beef" and not "cow"

Pig meat is called pork, and chicken meat is called chicken. But why, then, is the meat of a cow and a bull called the mysterious name "beef"? After all, this word is not even close to being the same root with any name for representatives of cattle. In order to find the answer to this question, you will have to delve deeply into the semantics of the name.

Cows have always been called beef. / Photo: onegreenplanet.org.

Today, beef means more than just the meat of cattle such as cows and bulls. The same category includes the meat of buffaloes, calves, oxen. Looking ahead, it should be noted right away that the words "cow" and "bull" in Russian are relatively young. The word "beef", or rather its root, is much older. The fact is that the root "gwou" is a Proto-Indo-European root that occurs in a huge number of words denoting representatives of cattle in a variety of languages. Including Slavic.

What unites all written Slavic languages? The fact that they appeared not without the cultural influence of the Byzantine Empire, the famous mission of Cyril and Methodius. So, in the Old Russian language there was the word "govado", which was applied to cattle. Subsequently, it entered the Macedonian, Czech, Serbian, Slovenian, Slovak, Bulgarian and Russian languages ​​under the guise of the words: govedsko, hovězí, beef, govedina, hovädzie, beef and beef. All of these words have been used to refer to bulls, cows, buffaloes, etc.

Thus, the word "beef" is a general designation for livestock, and most importantly, it is much more ancient than the designations we are used to. In addition, in relation to the meat of domestic animals, this word has been used since time immemorial, and therefore the linguistic tradition simply could not change over many centuries, as the ancestors continued to stubbornly call the meat of the cow exactly "beef" and did not reinvent the wheel, inventing unnecessary new words like "beef" or "cow".

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Continuing the topic, read about why do australians have cowsunless they milk them and raise the calves.
A source: https://novate.ru/blogs/310521/59199/

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