# Gender neutral singular term for cows.



## papakapp

The recent deer thread brought this to mind.  I hope this warrants its own thread.
I am talking about domesticated, generic dairy bovine here.
Cows are female.  Bulls are male.  Bovine is the broader family, and cattle is plural.  But what is the gender neutral, singular term?


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## perpend

I use "cow" to refer, in general, to both a male and a female. I would consider "cow" gender-neutral.

When you go "cow-tipping" how do you know which gender it is? It would be downright impolite to tip a female. 

I grew up on a farm in Wisconsin, to add some credo.


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## Copyright

perpend said:


> When you go "cow-tipping" how do you know which gender it is? It would be downright impolite to tip a female.



Some of us look for horns first -- but I suppose it depends on your beverage of the evening. 

I would use "cows" for the lot of them.


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## perpend

The horns are sawed off most steers, for what it's worth. Poor things. I had to watch this. My dad still does it. You have to look at the nether regions to really decide. But, you don't take time for that when you're tipping cows.


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## Thomas Tompion

What's the matter with ox?  It means a singular bovine of either sex, doesn't it?


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## lucas-sp

I thought oxen were dudes.

I would say, in a totally formal context, "a head of cattle" for a gender-neutral singular cow. In everyday speech, I think that "a cow" is a good term for a gender-neutral singular cow: "A cow's digestive system is a fascinating mechanism." It seems like that doesn't necessarily refer to female cows.


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## Thomas Tompion

I find the suggestion that _cow_ is gender-neutral surprising.  In BE a cow is irrevocably feminine, even in this suburban age, I'd say, when 57% of British women, according to a recent survey, don't know that eggs come from chickens, which raises questions about where they think chickens come from, doesn't it?  Before the feminists gird up their loins, I ought to add that I expect the figure would have been higher for British men.


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## perpend

Have you ever been on a farm, Thomas?


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## boozer

Thomas Tompion said:


> What's the matter with ox? It means a singular bovine of either sex, doesn't it?


I always thought oxen were only gender-neutral insorfar as they are, actually, castrated male bovines used for ploughing and pulling carts and the like... 

But yes, a cow is always, irrevocably female for me as well.


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## perpend

Have you ever lived/been on a farm, boozer?


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## Thomas Tompion

boozer said:


> I always thought oxen were only gender-neutral insorfar as they are, actually, castrated male bovines used for ploughing and pulling carts and the like...
> 
> But yes, a cow is always, irrevocably female for me as well.


Hi Boozer,

Most dictionaries give two definitions for ox - 1. an adult bovine, 2. a castrated adult male bovine, or words to that effect - so I don't think being castrated is a necessary part of the deal.



perpend said:


> Have you ever been on a farm, Thomas?


Yes.


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## boozer

perpend said:


> Have you ever lived/been on a farm, boozer?


Errrm, lived? You mean like going there, spending the day, then sleeping, then milking the bull in the morning, etc.? No, I have not. Then, been? Like actually stepping inside the compound? No, not really. But I have bypassed compounds with buildings of which I have been told were farms.  (No, really, my experience is very limited, I based my post on the general knowledge I thought I had...)


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## perpend

Have you ever worked on a farm, Thomas?

Well, you get a "farm credit", boozer!!!


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## Thomas Tompion

I feel we should separate this issue of which of us has or hasn't been or worked on a farm - maybe a new thread? - from the correct gender-neutral word for a bovine.

It's amusing, to me at least, that several of us are using _bovine_ to perform this function, though the word was rejected by Papakapp in the OP as being too broad.


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## perpend

A male bovine is in gender-neutral-speak a "cow".


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## LilianaB

For me cows are gender neutral, whereas bulls and oxen are male only.


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## velisarius

Wikipedia, article "Cattle",Single Terminology Issue- "any mature herd of cattle in a pasture is statistically likely to consist mostly of cows".

Personally in answer to ewie's question, I might have said _ribsteaks_ (my favourite cut of beef).


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## JustKate

papakapp said:


> The recent deer thread brought this to mind. I hope this warrants its own thread.
> I am talking about domesticated, generic dairy bovine here.
> Cows are female. Bulls are male. Bovine is the broader family, and cattle is plural. But what is the gender neutral, singular term?



_Cow_ is fine. Technically a cow is female, of course, but in practice dairy farmers and the owners of cow-calf herds generally refer to a single, non-specified individual as a cow. After all, most of the cattle they own are female and are, in fact, cows - and the ones that aren't cows are heifers (that is, younger females), calves or steers (that is, neutered males used for meat). Very few dairy farms even have a bull any more, and there aren't many bulls on the typical beef operation, either.

So as I said, _cow_ is fine. Dairy and beef farmers use it all the time. Cows are one of the rare instances (geese are another) in which the female-specific term is used for the species as a whole. I confess that there's something about this that bothers the precisionist that lives inside me (I usually write around it so as to allow me to use the plural _cattle_), but in this case, the precisionist really needs to just get over it.

Technically you can also say "one head of cattle," but almost no one does, and it bothers me even more than _cow_. So really and truly, _cow_ is fine.

P.S. I have been writing about agriculture and talking to farmers for - good gracious, how time flies! - more than 25 years now.


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## boozer

The thread is about the singular term.


> But what is the gender neutral, singular term?



This means 'a cow'. Not the unspecific reference to the whole herd as 'cows'. 

So, I still find it hard to believe that anyone could imagine a mature male bovine upon hearing 'a cow'.  Indeed, as I mentioned before, my farming experience is limited to non-existent, but we grow up hearing that 'milk comes from cows' and that 'the cow is the bull's wife', 'stay away from the larger beast with horns - it is not a cow'  etc. - the kind of stuff parents teach to their small city kids when they see cattle for the first time... When I hear 'a cow', I always imagine there is an udder.


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## Myridon

Thomas Tompion said:


> What's the matter with ox?  It means a singular bovine of either sex, doesn't it?


Disregarding the other problems, "bovine" includes animals that aren't _Bos taurus_, i.e. cows.  A zebu trained to pull a cart can be called an ox.


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## JustKate

Thomas Tompion said:
			
		

> Most dictionaries give two definitions for ox - 1. an adult bovine, 2. a castrated adult male bovine, or words to that effect - so I don't think being castrated is a necessary part of the deal.





Myridon said:


> Disregarding the other problems, "bovine" includes animals that aren't _Bos taurus_, i.e. cows. A zebu trained to pull a cart can be called an ox.



Yes, that is one problem with "bovine." Also, it really isn't used by people talking casually about livestock, except maybe as a joke - or it might be used in its technical sense to differentiate, for example, bovines from ovines. 

_Ox_ just doesn't work because...well, because it doesn't. There are specific species of oxen, but in terms of farm livestock, the word is used exclusively to refer to steers that have been allowed to get really large so as to be useful for pulling heavy loads. They're pretty rare these days, so the word actually isn't used much at all.

I think the "adult bovine" definition of _ox_ is archaic now. I've seen it used in written sources, fairly old ones, but really, *nobody *says it this way, at least none of the farmers that I've ever talked to do so, and that's a LOT of farmers.


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## Hau Ruck

I'd never use _ox _nor _oxen_ to describe anything other than a male.
I'd also never use the word _bovine_.  
_Cows_ or _cattle_ given my druthers.


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## Uncle Bob

"Walker's Mammals of the World", R.E.Nowak, Vol II, 1999,  p. 1153ff gives:
Genus _Bos_ - Oxen
Species _Bos taurus_ - Aurochs and domestic cattle.
Unfortunately it continues to use only the plural in its description.

Bet you didn't see many aurochs on the farm, Thomas.


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## JulianStuart

I think if I saw one in the distance (far enough away not to be able to discern its gender) and wanted to point it out to someone, I'd not hesitate to use the word cow as gender-neutral!

"Hey, Fred, what's that cow doing in your vegetable garden?"


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## Packard

A cow is a female bovine which has borne offspring. A female that has not borne offspring is a heifer.

A rude way men sometimes refer to fat women is to call them "a cow".  For me, "cow" is always female and older.  

According to this WIKI article there is no such singular term for cattle: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cattle

_...There is no universally used singular form in modern English of "cattle", other than the sex- and age-specific terms such as cow, bull, steer and heifer..._


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## Myridon

Packard said:


> According to this WIKI article there is no such singular term for cattle: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cattle


Additionally, this is the meaning of cattle that I (as a non-cattle rancher) generally think of (Merriam Webster):


> *1 :* domesticated *quadrupeds *held as property or raised for use; _specifically_ *:* bovine animals on a farm or ranch


I'm never quite sure if it means cows, sheep, goats, or whatever unless there's some more specific context.


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## JustKate

Guys (and gals, assuming there are any commenting on this besides me), really and truly _cow_ is fine - and the reason it's fine is that there just isn't anything else. Nothing else works. Nothing.

It isn't completely gender neutral - I mean, you wouldn't want to point to a full-blooded bull and say, "Ooh, look at the big cow!" You would sound like an ignorant city boy and they would laugh at you for days. And they'd snicker if you called a steer a "bull," too, because the thing about bulls is that they're oh, so obviously male, if you know what I mean. If you referred to something that has an udder as a "bull," you'd provoke the same reaction. 

But you could, without inspiring ridicule from any farmers who happened to be around, use _cow_ neutrally to refer to a non-specific individual or as a modifier, e.g., "the cow herd" or "What breed of cow do you raise?" ("cattle" would work here as well) or "Does a cow sleep standing up?" (to which the answer is no, by the way. Cow tipping is a myth, or so I'm told.)


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## JulianStuart

JulianStuart said:


> I think if I saw one in the distance (far enough away not to be able to discern its gender) and wanted to point it out to someone, I'd not hesitate to use the word cow as gender-neutral!
> 
> "Hey, Fred, what's that cow doing in your vegetable garden?"



My point was that cow is used BOTH as a specific , e.g., to distinguish it from a bull, and as a gender-neutral, to distinguish it from e.g., a goat or sheep.  Does anyone think my comment from Fred (above) is actually wrong?


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## JustKate

_I_ don't. That's exactly what I'd say to Fred. What else could one say? There is literally nothing else that would work, at least not that I can think of. 

(Sorry, Julian - I missed your "Fred" comment when I was writing my previous post.)


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## Hau Ruck

JulianStuart said:


> ...cow is used BOTH as a specific , e.g., to distinguish it from a bull, and as a gender-neutral, to distinguish it from e.g., a goat or sheep.




Well said; spot-on. I think that answers the OP nicely.


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## Packard

JulianStuart said:


> ..."Hey, Fred, what's that cow doing in your vegetable garden?"



I would assume that it was a set-up for a Henny Youngman joke:

"Hey, Fred, what's that cow doing in your vegetable garden?"

"My wife? Oh, she's just doing some gardening."

If we stick to the youngsters, then "calf" is gender neutral. But I would not use "cow" to refer to an adult male bovine.

There is a "gender-neutral" bovine, called (I believe) an "intersex". It is referred to in the Wiki article I linked earlier. It refers to the female twin of a male animal that (apparently) is infertile.


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## JustKate

No, Packard, of course you wouldn't call a bull a "cow" - the term simply isn't that gender neutral. But what would you use if there was no way (or no need) to distinguish the gender? In that case, all you've got is _cow_. That's it.

The word I've heard for a sterile female twin, by the way, is _freemartin_. I've always meant to look the etymology of that word up, but I'd probably better not do so for this thread - don't want to get too far off topic!


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## JulianStuart

JulianStuart said:


> I think if I saw one in the distance (*far enough away not to be able to discern its gender*) and wanted to point it out to someone, I'd not hesitate to use the word cow as gender-neutral!
> 
> "Hey, Fred, what's that cow doing in your vegetable garden?"





Packard said:


> I would assume that it was a set-up for a Henny Youngman joke:
> 
> "Hey, Fred, what's that cow doing in your vegetable garden?"
> 
> "My wife? Oh, she's just doing some gardening."
> 
> If we stick to the youngsters, then "calf" is gender neutral. But I would not use "cow" to refer to an adult male bovine.
> 
> There is a "gender-neutral" bovine, called (I believe) an "intersex". It is referred to in the Wiki article I linked earlier. It refers to the female twin of a male animal that (apparently) is infertile.



I bolded part of my original , which was in there _specifically for the situation where the speaker does not know the gender of the beast_, to illustrate the situation where using "cow" is acceptable as the singular gender-neutral word.  (And I mean that grammatically not biologically, , of course ).


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## Packard

Of course "cow" is not limited to bovines.  The alligator, bison, camel, dinosaur, dolphin, elephant, elk, gnu, moose, porpoise, seal and walrus are all candidates to be called "cows" (if they are females).

I don't think anyonw would call a group of sexually ambiguous alligators "cows".


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## Thomas Tompion

JulianStuart said:


> My point was that cow is used BOTH as a specific , e.g., to distinguish it from a bull, and as a gender-neutral, to distinguish it from e.g., a goat or sheep.  Does anyone think my comment from Fred (above) is actually wrong?


Yes, I do.  I'd object too if anyone called the Biblical stalled ox a stalled cow, not that I think that ox these days is better than many of the other suggestions.


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## JustKate

Thomas Thompion said:
			
		

> Yes, I do. I'd object too if anyone called the Biblical stalled ox a stalled cow, not that I think that ox these days is better than many of the other suggestions.





Packard said:


> Of course "cow" is not limited to bovines. The alligator, bison, camel, dinosaur, dolphin, elephant, elk, gnu, moose, porpoise, seal and walrus are all candidates to be called "cows" (if they are females).
> 
> I don't think anyonw would call a group of sexually ambiguous alligators "cows".



The difference, Packard, is that there is a non-gender-specific term for individual alligators, bison, dolphins and walruses (and oxen, Thomas), and that's _alligator, bison, dolphin_ and _walrus _(and _ox_, Thomas_)_. And the equivalent for _cattle_ would be....?

Yeah. There isn't one. Which is why you either use _cow_ or you write/talk around it. There are no other alternatives. 

The fact is that _goose_ is used exactly the same way - as a general word for an individual of the species, but also as the term for a female. Hence the terms _goose _and_ gander_: the goose is the female, the gander is the male. The reason this hasn't bothered you, I'd guess, is that you weren't aware that goose=breeding female. But it does. It's also used generally, though - exactly like _cow_, the difference being that people not involved with raising geese don't immediately associate the word _goose_ with female characteristics such as udders (possibly because birds don't have any of those ?). But that is in fact one of the meanings of the word.


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## Hau Ruck

I agree with Kate.  There are no other non-gendered, individual terms for such a thing. _Cow_ is the only thing that will suffice.  

I doubt I'd often have to "guess" the sex of a cow/bull.  Both their "indicative" parts are pretty large and pretty apparent.    Let's stop all this silly non-sense talk of CowBulls with no distinguishable sex parts.


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## ewie

Filsmith said:


> Let's stop all this silly non-sense talk of CowBulls with no distinguishable sex parts.


Yes, _please_, let's.

It seems to me we're all fairly well agreed that the only gender-neutral word for cows is (ta-dah!) _cows_ ... *except* for those among us who for utterly mysterious but no doubt _good _reasons ~ yet to become apparent ~ insist that it isn't and who are quite happy (presumably) to point at a field full of cows and say _Oh look at the bovines, Observe yonder oxen a-grazing,_ or whatever.


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## Thomas Tompion

Mr E, you remind me of those immortal lines, famous for onomatopoeia:

_Sweeter thy voice, but every sound is sweet;
Myriads of rivulets hurrying thro' the lawn,
The moan of doves in immemorial elms,
And murmuring of innumerable beeves.
_
_Cows _wouldn't rhyme, of course, but that wasn't the only reason Tennyson didn't use the word.


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## wandle

This page of annotations on Wodehouse sheds an interesting sidelight:

Myriads of rivulets hurrying thro' the lawn,
The moan of doves in immemorial elms,
And murmuring of innumerable bees.

Tennyson, from "The Princess"

(Students of literature will remember that John Crowe Ransom famously changed the last line into "...murdering of innumerable beeves" to demonstrate a point about the irrelevance of sound to sense.)


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## natkretep

ewie said:


> It seems to me we're all fairly well agreed that the only gender-neutral word for cows is (ta-dah!) _cows_



Has no-one heard the silly children's song called _*Mr *Cow_? 

Not Ms Cow or Mrs Cow or Mistress Cow.


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## wandle

The OED approves the two terms mentioned by *ThomasTompion*:

*ox*
noun (plural oxen /ˈɒks(ə)n/)
_a domesticated bovine animal kept for milk or meat; a cow or bull:_
he was tall and broad and as strong as an ox

*beef*
[count noun] (plural beeves /biːvz/ or US also beefs) Farming
_a cow, bull, or ox fattened for its meat: _
a beef sent to the abattoir


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## Yondlivend

How about a *neat*?  Here's how Merriam-Webster defines it:


> the common domestic bovine (_Bos Taurus_)


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## ewie

*Moderator note: *_Well, folks, it's been fun* but we feel it's now time to put this thread out to pasture.



_* I use the term very loosely ~ about _this_ loosely.


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