Cocks: An Essay on a Word - Softcover

Inhaltsangabe

Why are many of English’s “dirty” words linked together metaphorically? What do the words cock, cuckold, horny, screw, prick, and pecker have in common? They are all metaphorically linked through the rooster and its anatomy. "Cocks: an Essay on a Word" details the semantic range of meanings connected to the rooster's claws, the cockspur, the coxcomb, the throat that emits the telltale crow, even the beak and plumage.

Inspired by the search for a single source of human language - a secular Tower of Babel - Cocks tours the globe, the world's languages, and ancient history and myth, tracing the extended rooster metaphor through languages as separated in space and time as ancient Sumerian, Sanskrit, and Latin to modern Mandarin, English, and Basque. It traces the word's semantics through meanings as diverse as fingernails, fishhooks, gods, and sea monsters.

With findings across every continent and thousands of words that fit the basic pattern, this book and its conclusions suggest a different path for tracing word origins - with metaphor and extended metaphor lighting the way.

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