In a previous posting I have mentioned various words that are applied to groups of animals, from a pride of lions to a mob of kangaroos, to a swarm of bees or locusts.I even suggested a new word (and a good one I think) for the massive flocks of starlings we see assembled in the Fall (a vulgarity of starlings).
Listening to a comedian on television tonight, I began to wonder if there might be a secret raft of words used to describe specific animal excrement. "Shit" after all has grown just a little too tired from over-use.
I remembered that T.H. White had used the word "Fewmet" as the correct word for the scat of
There are!
Below is a small sampling of words I have gleaned without trying too hard.
Apparently there is a book out there by Cyril E. Hare that I really must get -- Language of Field Sports - which is full of such stuff.
Can I really resist knowing a dozen animal-specific words for coppulating? I think not!
In any case, until such a book is ordered and arrived, I offer for your edification a few new words to toss out in casual conversation (note, some of these are Medieval and no longer much in use).
- Billitting: Fox scat
- Bodewash: Dried cow or buffalo dung
- Buttons: Sheep dung
- Coprolite: Fossilized excrement from a dinosaur
- Crotiles or Crotisings: Hare poop
- Fewmets: Deer pellets
- Fuants: The squat of various vermin
- Lesses: Boar, Bear or Wolf turds
- Guano: Seafowl offerings used as fertilizer
- Mutes: Hawk chalk
- Scumber: Dog crap
- Spraints: Otter calling cards
- Tath: Cattle patties
- Wormcast: Earthworm vermidung
Does anyone have any more? I know they're out there!
Not to be too pedantic, but TH White's word was "fewmets" (not *fewments). It's a real word, referring to the poop of a hunted beast. And White used it to refer to the poop of the Questing Beast (Beast Glatisant), not a dragon.
ReplyDeleteYou are correct on both counts! I will correct the mis-spelling.
ReplyDeleteWhether the Questing Beast is actually a dragon or not is a matter of mythology-taxonomy. Though technically it is a type of chimera (an imaginary monster made up of grotesquely disparate parts), it is described by Mallory and others as having a snakes head, the body of a leopard or lizard, the back legs of a lion, and the hooves of a deer, and sounding like 30 hounds baying, and it is typically drawn as looking like a dragon (perhaps because that's what artists know how to draw). I would provide a decription from T.H. White but I cannot find my volume. Someone please come and sort out my library!
See pictures at:
>> www.sacred-texts.com/neu/trt/trt04.htm
and at
>> http://www.nashfordpublishing.co.uk/portraits/arthurian_scenes.html
P.
Hee hee .... i am really showing my super nerd colors here.
ReplyDeleteYou make a good point about the Questing Beast / dragon terminology question.
Anyway. I forgot to say in my first message that I really enjoy your blog. Not only the green conservative message, but the consistently good writing -- something unfortunately not common enough in the blogosphere.
Chip
I guess that M. and I will have to rename the bend in the little road behind our house, a bend that sort of marks a border between dog territories.
ReplyDeleteFormerly "Dog Shit Corner," it will now be "Scumber Corner." Sounds so much more folkloric, don't you think?