2977: Equus vs Caballus Feb 14, 2025

The Latin word for ‘horse’ is equus. Across modern Romance languages, words for ‘horse’ are very similar to each other with a totally different root, such as Italian cavallo, French cheval, Spanish caballo, and Romanian cal. Only slightly exceptional is Portuguese, which uses cavalo for the masculine but égua for the feminine, a term more directly descended from equus. English has words from both roots, like cavalry and equestrian, but none are native, neither to Germanic English nor indeed to Latin, possibly from a gallic word.

The replacement of equus by caballus can be attributed to sociolinguistic factors. Equus was the formal term in Classical Latin, closely associated with the elite, military, and ceremonial contexts. Conversely, caballus emerged as a colloquial term in Late Latin, originally referring to workhorses or packhorses. The fact that ‘cavalry’ has an explicitly militaristic context is incidental, and in Latin the term was ‘equites’. Its practicality in everyday life led to its widespread adoption in Vulgar Latin, eventually becoming the dominant term as Latin evolved into the Romance languages. 

The two terms in portuguese will be further explored tomorrow.