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I used to work in a place where we referred to the boss as our Philosopher King: full of great ideas, all totally unworkable or impractical with the tools at hand.
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stranger
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In the American Civil War (1861-1865), the word 'boss' used as an adjective mean good, great, the best.
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Carpal Tunnel
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In the American Civil War (1861-1865), the word 'boss' used as an adjective mean good, great, the best. I remember it's being used that way in the 1960s, too!
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stranger
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I was a child on a Wisconsin dairy farm. To called the milk cows from the lower pasture we would stand outside the barn, cup our hands around our mouths and shout "ca-baaaaaas!" It worked every time.
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Last edited by etaoin; 10/15/07 03:55 PM.
formerly known as etaoin...
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stranger
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I beleive the use of boss for cow or calf in English probably goes back to the Ancient Greek bous for ox. A modern farmer and a farmer in ancient Greece would be able to call each others cattle, and the cattle would respond.
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Carpal Tunnel
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the use of boss for cow or calf in English probably goes back to the Ancient Greek bous for oxLatin bōs, bovis, Classical Greek βους ( bous, /'bo:s/) (Modern Greek βους ( bous, /'vus/)), English cow, kine, Old English cy, Sanskrit go ( gaus) 'ox' are all from PIE * gwou- 'ox, bull, cow'. English boss is usually thought to be from Latin bōs. Note that the phonologies of Classical and Modern Greek are different.
Ceci n'est pas un seing.
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zmj, this is the part of Linguistics/philology that I just haven't grasped (and I suppose it's not easy to grasp at an amateur level) - e.g., how do you deny a connection between bossy and bovis on the one hand and yet make PIE connections that are so non-obvious (ox, bull, cow)?
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One of fictional detective Gideon Fell's favorite expressions when exasperated was "Archons of Athens!" I always wondered what an Archon was. Now I know!
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how do you deny a connection between bossy and bovis on the one hand and yet make PIE connections that are so non-obvious (ox, bull, cow)?
I don't think I denied a connection between English boss(y) and Latin bōs. (In fact, I stated that some think that boss(y) was borrowed directly from Latin bōs.) I was implying that English boss(y) did not go back to Ancient Greek bous. (If anything, the two words are cousins of a sort, because they all go back to PIE *gwous.) If Early Modern English boss(y) could be tracked back to Classical Greek, you would have to explain why you were redrawing the family tree of IE languages. How was it that Greeks migrated to the area around present-day Jutland and how their speech was transformed from something quite different than surrounding Germanic languages into something that does not look like Greek, but remarkably looks like those same Germanic languages. Then you have to explain how Old English cy, which is related to Greek bous, came to be, while boss didn't go through some similar sound change. By this time you've pretty much left linguistics, lexicography, and etymology far behind and travelled to a foreign land. Perhaps I don't understand your statement.
Ceci n'est pas un seing.
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