The Porky Pig Family

Several years ago this blog addressed the difference between lamb and mutton, beef and cow. I did not address the differences between pork, pig, hog, sow, boar and swine. There are a lot of good stories in this word family.

Pig comes is defined as “a young swine of either sex, especially a domestic hog…weighing less than 120 pounds” (like lamb versus sheep or calf versus cow.) It now has a broader meaning, and has developed a number of additional uses.

Pig comes from Old English, where it originally referred only to the young of the species. The first variation from this meaning was in the 1540s when it began as a negative description for people. In the 1580s it was used to describe an oblong piece of metal, as in a large, heavy lump of metal. Flying pigs were used to describe something unlikely to happen as far back as the 1610s. Police were not referred to as pigs until 1811.

Pork came into English in the early 1300s from the Old French porc, that was used of pigs, swine, or boars.  (The Old French got it pretty directly from the Latin porcus.) Like mutton and beef, it goes back to the Norman conquest. The “pork barrel” is where one could go to cut a portion of bacon for home consumption is an Americanism from 1801. Congress did not get into the practice of pork barrel spending (or at least it was not called that in writing) until 1907. 

That was about the same time the phrase “bringing home the bacon” began being used (same source image, used since at least 1906 to refer to earnings from work.) Bacon, the back and sides of the hog, was adopted into English in the early 1300s from the French word of the same spelling. One of my favorite comedy bits is Jim Gaffigan's video on bacon; the version linked is missing his comment "I even like films with Kevin Bacon!" 

An interesting story behind the words porker and grunter that sailers call this animal can be found here.

Swine is the “stout, cloven-hoofed artiodacthyl of the Old World family Suidae.” Swine is also the plural of swine. People were called swine by the late 1300s, long before they were called pigs. The phrase “pearls before swine” is from Matthew 7:6 and is a very descriptive story (read the Bible for yourself - it will be good for you). However, when the Bible was translated into French the Latin word became confused with the French word for the daisy, and the Dutch phrase ended up as “roses before swine.”

Hog is any hoofed member of the Suidae family, including both boars and swine; it also refers to any swine that weigh more than 120 pounds. Since the late 1100s it has been used of any swine raised specifically for its meat. By the 1400s it was used of a greedy person. The phrase “to go the whole hog” may have come from the discount received by buying the whole animal, and has been used since 1828; but in 1779 the story was told in English about “the Muslim sophists, forbidden by the Quran from eating a certain unnamed part of the hog, who debated which part was intended and managed to exempt the whole of it from prohibition.” 

Road hog has been around since 1886, and only since 1967 has hog been used of Harley-Davidson motorcycles.

Boars are “uncastrated male swines.” (Yes, removing the ovaries can be called castration just as removing the testicles is.) It is Old English and is of unknown origin. Sows (pronounced as in flower) are females, and the word is used not just of swine but of other animals, like bears.

The phrase “pig in a poke” dates back at least to the 1520s. A poke is a bag, and buying a pig in a poke is buying the animal without seeing it. Back when meat was scarce a person could cheat another by selling them a bag of expensive pig but substituting more common cats or dogs for the pig. This practice of cheating someone is also the origin of the phrase “let the cat out of the bag,” which now means to tell a secret.

One final note – Porky Pig will celebrate his 80^th birthday next year. Like many in Hollywood, I think he’s had plastic surgery over the years.