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Dear MaxQ: My dictionary says hogs are pigs that are ready for market.


#50984 01/02/02 01:36 AM
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Sweet Max, 'round these parts, hogs are exclusively male pigs. Females are sows. (Sow rhyming with cow.) No farmer I knew would ever say "the hogs" when referring to a group that he knew contained both genders. That would be "the pigs".


#50985 01/02/02 01:49 AM
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#50986 01/02/02 02:10 AM
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My grandpa used to raise pigs. I can still smell that sour pig-slop smell. When I was little, my sister and I used to throw corncobs at the boars. Extra points were awarded for hitting them you-know-where. Boy did they grunt then! And run! Little kids can be so cruel.


#50987 01/02/02 02:53 AM
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Jackie, I'd disagree with you on this, and think "hog" means the mature animal, of either gender.

BUT: bartleby-ing indicates that:
-hog can either mean (1a) the animal, whether domesticated or the wild, or (1b) the domesticated animal, but especially one weighing over 54 kilograms (120 pounds)
-boar can either mean the adult male, or the uncastrated male, or the wild boar.
-pig means a member of this biological family, but "especially the domesticated hog ... when young or of comparatively small size."

Ogden Nash claims a different distinction between pig and hog:
Why does the pygmy
Indulge in polygmy?
His tribal dogma
Frowns on monogma.
Monogma's a stigma
To any pigma:
If he goes for monogmy
A pygmy's a hogmy.



#50988 01/02/02 04:11 AM
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hogs are exclusively male pigs.

So then males can't be chauvinist pigs, they can only be chauvinist hogs!


#50989 01/02/02 04:25 AM
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But Nash had this to say about the pig!

THE PIG

The pig, if I am not mistaken,
Supplies us sausage, ham, and bacon.
Let others say his heart is big--
I call it stupid of the pig.

Ogden Nash
from his collection, "Food."
© 1989 by Frances Nash, Isabel Eberstadt, and Linell Smith



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Dear MaxQ: My dictionary says hogs are pigs that are ready for market.

My trusty Webster's says: hog, noun.
1. A pig, esp. one that is full-grown
2. An animal related to the pig, as the peccary.

Now I have never heard of a peccary myself, so in looking that up, I found:
peccary, noun. Either of two species of tropical American animals resembling and related to pigs.

Doesn't this appear to be going in circles?


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Doesn't this appear to be going in circles?

"Blessed are those who go around in circles for they shall be known as Big Wheels."

Merrily we roll along, roll along, roll along ...."



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RE: the peccary.

i've always thought of this as the complete family of pigs.. nowdays, with all sort of "pot bellied" pig being considered house pets, even city folk like me recognize that pigs is a very general term. Peccary is the family of pigs, including wild species of boars, warthogs, and all variety of domesticate pigs. it shows up in lots of the latin names for pigs, so if you know pigs mostly from the zoo, as i do, it actually is a pretty common word.


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