Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2010 January 30

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January 30

Billy

What is the etymology of billy goat?174.3.98.236 (talk) 08:10, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

Strangely, no-one seems to know. The OED simply states that it comes from the name "Billy" + goat, and the earliest example of usage that they can find is in 1861 (103 years later than the first use of "nanny goat"). Perhaps someone can find a better explanation? Dbfirs 09:00, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

There are several bird and animal names where what are apparently forenames were appended to the original word, but I don't know whether that was in the 19th century or earlier, or whether there is any particular relationship between them. "Billy goat" and "nanny goat" are two, but there are also, for example, "tom tit", "robin redbreast", "jenny wren", "mag_pie", and no doubt others. The best source of information might be here, if anyone has access to it. Ghmyrtle (talk) 09:10, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

Another example of using a personal name to distinguish between the sexes of animals is "tomcat". I don't know about "jenny wren", but I think "tom tit", "robin redbreast", and "magpie" can refer to animals of either sex. I think "jackass" started out like "tomcat" (male personal name + animal name to indicate a male animal), but since the term nowadays almost never refers to the animal, it's hard to say whether that's still true. +Angr 11:35, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

This is my best guess, and from it you might be able to find references, but it might come from the Norman Conquest, where the French imported their own names for English animals: Reynard the Fox, and Broc the Badger come to mind: at the same time, the dual names for the animal and their meat came in, so we have deer/venison, pig/pork, cow/beef, sheep/mutton (i.e. English/French). Sorry don't have time to find references at the moment - may try later, unless someone else can look this up. --TammyMoet (talk) 12:26, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

Another thing that comes immediately to mind is the gender connection: duck/drake, tom/queen cat, ruff/reeve, hind/stag...--TammyMoet (talk) 12:27, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

I found an 1814 edition of Lessons for Children that contains the following passage, clearly referring to goats: "There was once a little boy, who was a sad coward. He was afraid of two little kids, Nanny and Billy, when they came and put their noses through the pales of the court; and he would not pluck Billy by the beard."--Cam (talk) 16:21, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

An excellent find! I wonder if this is the original source of "billy-goat". The "Nanny" goes back further to 1758 at least. Dbfirs 23:30, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

I would think there's a good chance the term was already well-known once it found its way into print. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 10:16, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

Here's an interesting writeup from a UK source[1] that suggests the "Billy" part was a euphemism for Satan, and that depictions of Satan having a goat-like head with a beard are connected with the term. What's unclear is which derived from which. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 13:02, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

Depictions of Satan as a goat appear to derive mainly from mid-19th century occultist writer Eliphas Levi (see Baphomet), and from what I can tell such depictions would have been rather obscure (outside of small occultist circles) until the 1960s... AnonMoos (talk) 14:47, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

So 1814 is the earliest referenced usage (and might just be an original coinage to match "Nanny" which already existed). That gives just enough time for child readers in 1814 to coin the term "billy-goat", to use it in conversation, and for it to reach print in 1861. Dbfirs 17:47, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

The next question - why "nanny"? Ghmyrtle (talk) 17:50, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

That's apparently from wiktionary:nanny, which (similar to things like mama and dada) is a cross-language nursery word. --jpgordon^{::==( o )} 19:55, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

There's a use in 1805 in this poetry anthology, written in the Cumbrian dialect. Warofdreams talk 17:33, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the interesting link (the dialect hasn't changed much - I can read it fairly easily). Evidently "billy goat" dates back further. "Nanny" was already being applied to a goat (not a grandmother) as early as 1758. Can anyone explain why? Dbfirs 10:23, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

Game to make as many words as possible from a larger word

Is there a name or term for the game or practice of constructing smaller words from the letters of a larger word? e.g. RETINAS, you could make EAT, TEAR, TEARS, SAINT, etc. The anagram article refers to these as an imperfect anagram, but I wondered if there was another, more specific, term. Thank you for your help! --Rajah (talk) 18:21, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

Or a term/name for just the practice of making a smaller word out of another word? (I guess that is imperfect anagram, but I was wondering if there's some neologism I don't know about, like SUBANAGRAM, SUBGRAM, SUBAGRAM, etc. --Rajah (talk) 18:23, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

ok, google seems to show a lot of results for "subanagram". I guess this was confessional debugging in a way. Thanks! --Rajah (talk) 18:24, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

In Italian, which has a very developed nomenclature for word-games, we call it logogrifo [2]. My Italian-English dictionary gives logogrifo-logogriph, but I don't know if logogriph has the exact meaning or just means any kind of riddles.--151.51.16.47 (talk) 22:53, 30 January 2010 (UTC)