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Also about chicken, pork, meat, and beef
+343If cow meat is beef and pig meat is pork, why is chicken meat chicken, amirite?
Also about chicken, pork, and beef
+274You don't eat as much pork as you do beef, or chicken, amirite?
Poultry.
Yeah that's the generic name for the farm animals but you wouldn't say that you wanted some "fried poultry" instead of "fried chicken".
It isn't?
What isn't what?
Isn't meat referred to by name?
You call it "beef" not "cow" though.
Yes, but we call alligator, shrimp, crawfish, possum, and deer by their names when we refer to them as food. (To name some cajun/redneck food)
Wow you really do sound like a hillbillie from that list of food!
Well only opossum and deer are mammals from your list. Most people don't eat opossum and people (at least in the UK) call deer meat venison (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venison).
Touche that was a bit of a fail on my part. I guess you're right, for the most part.
Haha. It's probably just because who wants to eat pig chops? Or cow. Lol.:)
(ground) beef and pork (chops) sometimes are, but steak and venison arent. it seems like sometimes yes sometimes no
I don't understand what you mean. You sometimes call them pig chops and ground cow?
oh, also forgot to mention, guinea pig, dog, etc
Hey, we're talking about normal things to eat, here.
guinea pig is popular in west south america, dog is popular in asia. shall i go on?
I'm talking about the English language and so obviously the normal food where English is spoken. Why are you trying to be so awkward?
knowing cultural diversity is awkward?
It's a matter of relevancy. I make a post about the English language being used in "Western" countries (yes, it's implied obviously) and you think it's relevant to bring up other countries with other languages?
That's like me saying that the London Underground is really speedy and then you saying that the Paris Metro is slow. It has nothing to do with what I was talking about. Sure, it's the same sort of topic, but it's not relevant to the specific thing I was talking about.
lots of people call pigs "pork", i suppose i was wrong about the beef, although i swear i saw "cow" in a restaurant once...
What I was saying is that you don't call the meat by the animal name. Like you wouldn't say you put some cow in your noodles. You'd say you put some beef in.
yea, i was wrong about beef, ill admit. but for the foreign foods for english speaking countries, usually they have the name of the animal
It's because of the way English grew and developed! The anglo-saxons and some other place (sorry I don't remember!) kind of melded their languages together and in one place they'd call it one thing, and the anglo-saxons would call it something else so we just ended up keeping both words! One for the animal itself, one for the meat we eat off of it. It developed around the middle english period and it's been that way ever since!
I am disappoint that you didn't put a "!" at the end of your penultimate sentence.
That doesn't explain why chicken meat doesn't have a different word.
Its due to the fact that half of the English language comes from french (as indicated by "some other place") and french was used by nobles, etc. mostly in the castles in England after William the Conqueror took the throne in the Battle of Hastings. However the people out in the country/farms and such used the Anglo-Saxon words. Since fancy kitchens covered most dishes, they used french words (beouf -> beef, instead of cow).
That still doesn't explain why chicken meat doesn't have a different name, that just merely explains why it's beef and not "cow meat", like the comment I replied to says anyway.
Well, I don't know exactly why. Maybe chicken wasn't fancy enough to be in the kitchen of castles or something? What I said is a general explanation of what happened, not the origin of every single word.