The Exotic Sheep Jig
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fleurdelis28.)
Me: I don't know with whom else I can share a list of Shetland terms that includes a word for hermaphroditic sheep . . . Why? How many hermaphroditic sheep are born in the Shetland Islands? Is there something I've missed?
fleurdelis28: How often does it have to happen, I guess, before you need a word for it? We have a word for the general phenomenon; when there are more sheep than people, maybe that's the chief place you know it from...
I remember reading in an NYTimes article that in Nepal or somewhere similar that hermaphrodites form a separate caste consisting entirely of exotic dancers, or something like that.
Now I'm picturing hermaphroditic dancing sheep...
Me: *goes blind*
. . . I'm just curious why a simple adjectival phrase doesn't suffice.
fleurdelis28: Well, if you only ever see it in sheep, why would you need an adjective?
Me: I meant, like "Hermaphroditic Sheep" in English. When you have single words for something, it tends to mean you want to be able to say it quickly and often.
fleurdelis28: Well, yeah, but we also have experience with hermaphrodites of other species. If we only ever saw it in sheep, and raised an awful lot of cumulative sheep, we might have a word, even if the total number of hermaphroditic sheep were relatively low. Maybe they have a nice, dire superstition about it...
"The Tale of the Hermaphroditic Sheep...it came at dusk, as the tree branches scratched eerily in the cold north wind. We shuddered in the light of the campfire. It did an exotic sheep jig and left. We blinked really, really hard."
Look, I'm highly amused . . .
fleurdelis28.)Me: I don't know with whom else I can share a list of Shetland terms that includes a word for hermaphroditic sheep . . . Why? How many hermaphroditic sheep are born in the Shetland Islands? Is there something I've missed?
fleurdelis28: How often does it have to happen, I guess, before you need a word for it? We have a word for the general phenomenon; when there are more sheep than people, maybe that's the chief place you know it from...
I remember reading in an NYTimes article that in Nepal or somewhere similar that hermaphrodites form a separate caste consisting entirely of exotic dancers, or something like that.
Now I'm picturing hermaphroditic dancing sheep...
Me: *goes blind*
. . . I'm just curious why a simple adjectival phrase doesn't suffice.
fleurdelis28: Well, if you only ever see it in sheep, why would you need an adjective?
Me: I meant, like "Hermaphroditic Sheep" in English. When you have single words for something, it tends to mean you want to be able to say it quickly and often.
fleurdelis28: Well, yeah, but we also have experience with hermaphrodites of other species. If we only ever saw it in sheep, and raised an awful lot of cumulative sheep, we might have a word, even if the total number of hermaphroditic sheep were relatively low. Maybe they have a nice, dire superstition about it...
"The Tale of the Hermaphroditic Sheep...it came at dusk, as the tree branches scratched eerily in the cold north wind. We shuddered in the light of the campfire. It did an exotic sheep jig and left. We blinked really, really hard."
Look, I'm highly amused . . .
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(Anonymous) 2005-01-25 01:15 am (UTC)(link)no subject
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Nine