Tuesday July 17, 2012
The right word
By FADZILAH AMIN
Do you say cow, bull, ox or cattle? Peacock, peahen or peafowl? Our columnist answers various reader’s queries on which words to use.
WHEN we say “She is as proud as a peacock”, are we wrong in our choice of the last word? A reader called Lovely Willow would think so, since she says that Malaysians ought to be told as soon as possible that a “peacock” refers only to the male of the species. A female of this bird is a “peahen” and when we refer to the species in general, we should say “peafowl”.
Lovely Willow is right in her definitions of the three words, and these definitions ought to be remembered when we are referring to these birds biologically. But since male birds in general, and peacocks especially, are much more colourful than female ones, the word “peacock” is much more used metaphorically to denote beauty, pride and ostentation. A peahen is a drab creature in contrast. So why can’t we bend the rules a little when speaking metaphorically and compare a woman to a peacock if she is proud of her appearance and likes to deck herself in colourful clothes and accessories?
There is a chain store in Britain called “Peacocks”, that “offers great quality, fashionable clothes for women, men and kids at great prices.” I don’t think it would sound so fashionable if it were to be called “Peafowl”.
A cow, in contrast to a peacock, is not defined as strictly or consistently by dictionaries. Some dictionaries define a cow as a large female domestic animal; others don’t mention the word “female”. The Merriam-Webster’s Online Dictionary has more than one definition: one saying that it is female and another that it is “a domestic bovine animal regardless of sex or age.”
When we need to speak generally of this species of animal, we tend to say “cow” rather than “bull” or “ox”. Thus we say: “Her father has been rearing cows after retirement.” We also refer to “a man who rides a horse and whose job is to take care of cattle in the western parts of the US” (OALD) as “cowboys” and not “cattlemen”. Then there is “cow dung”, used as a fertiliser here, and consisting of the dung of both sexes of the animal.
In addition to the above uses of “cow”, there is a disease, BSE, that caused great problems in Britain some years ago, which is popularly known as “mad cow disease”. It afflicted both the male and the female animals of the species. I find it strange that the online Cambridge Advanced Learner’s Dictionary & Thesaurus, while using the word “female” in its definitions of “cow”, defines BSE in the following way: “abbreviation for bovine spongiform encephalopathy: a brain disease in cattle (= male and female cows) which causes the death of the animal.”
Reader Teoh Wei Jian wants to know whether the word “specialisation” or “specialty” should be used in the following context: “Cosmetic surgery is the most sought-after medical ________ followed by orthopaedics and cardiology sectors.”
Well, “specialty” is usually used in a medical context. The word refers to a branch of medicine that a medical doctor specialises in, like “cosmetic surgery” in Teoh’s sentence. This word is also used in dentistry.
“Specialisation” on the other hand refers to the process or fact of specialising.
I found a document on the Internet that clarifies this distinction. It is titled Specialisation In Dentistry: A Practical Guide, published by the Faculty of Dentistry of the Royal College of Surgeons in England. This document gives what it calls the “specialties” in dentistry, like “Oral Surgery and “Orthodontics”, and the steps dentists can take to qualify as specialists in them.
An interesting matter was raised by reader KK with regard to a Standard I examination paper in which each question required a pupil to fill in a blank in a sentence with the right word from a given list. Two such sentences were quoted:
1. “I ________ with my feet. (Choose from clap, snap, kick or stamp). I agree with KK here that the answer should be “kick” and not “stamp” (the teacher’s answer). OALD defines “kick” as “to hit somebody/something with your foot” and “stamp” as “to put your foot down heavily and noisily on the ground.” Thus boys can be said to kick a football with their feet, while an angry person just stamps his feet (not with his feet).
2. “Ahmad kicks with his _________. (Choose from feet, hands, legs or nose).
Again I agree with KK that the correct answer should be “feet” and not “legs” (the teacher’s answer). The definition of “kick” above clearly states “with your foot.” Although when someone is kicking something, the weight and strength of his leg are used to kick the thing, the point of contact is the foot, not the knee or shin, for instance, which are parts of the leg as well. There is, in fact, another verb, “to knee” which means “to hit or push somebody/something with your knee.”
I would like to end this article by clearing up the matter of the pronunciation of the word “correct”, which reader Ir.K.L.Chan brought up in response to Hussaini Abdul Karim’s letter to The Star on Wednesday 6 June. I have already written to Hussaini about this, and I hope he doesn’t mind that I bring it up here in order to clarify the matter to our readers.
The first syllable is pronounced like the BM “ke” while the second syllable is pronounced “rekt” (with the “e” as in “get”). The stress falls on the second syllable, not the first. You can hear this word correctly pronounced at:
http://oald8.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/dictionary/correct
> Fadzilah Amin taught English literature at university, but after retirement, started teaching English language. She believes we learn most when trying to teach others. Mind Our English is published once a week on Tuesdays. For comments or inquiries on English usage, please contact the writer at fedela7@yahoo.co.uk.
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