2325: nanny goat Apr 30, 2021

The term 'nanny goat' has been used to refer to a child's nurse and a domestic she-goat. It would be reasonable to assume that the term for the occupation existed either first or independently of the goat especially considering there were plenty of other terms from the 17th and 18th century that use 'nanny' in a variable sense but this is not true. The goat was an actual goat who would act as a sort of wet-nurse to a child who didn't have a mother, or whose mother couldn't or wouldn't lactate. When this term mostly replaced 'she-goat', 'billy goat' emerged to mostly replace 'he-goat'.

2314: Cat=Dog, Lamb, and Goat?—Wanderwort Apr 17, 2021

The word for 'dog' in Latin is 'canis' (hence English's 'canine') but the word for 'puppy' is 'catulus'. This also led to its own derivative word in English: 'cat'. This gets stranger however, with more distant relation to the Russian око́т (okót) meaning 'lamb', and Old Irish 'cadla' for 'goat'. Others go on still to connect this to the Arabic قِطّ‎ (qiṭṭ) (i.e. 'cat) and other Semitic words to classify this root as a wanderwort across Indo-European, Uralic, and Semitic languages without one clear origin. The original idea seems to involve however young, often small animals, or sometimes more generally animal fertility.