[Vocabulary] she-horse

[stanislaw.masny]

Can I add a 'she' prefix to any animal name to make a female animal name?

 

[Barb_D]

Actually a female goat is a nanny (oddly, that's the only animal I saw that did list "she-animal" as an alternative to the normal name) and a female sheep is a ewe.

 

[Linguist__]

I agree mostly with Gillnetter, but I think the female wolf is really called a 'she-wolf'. A bitch too, but similar to fox/vixen, there's another word other than bitch for female wolf.

 

[sarat_106]

Actually a female goat is a nanny (oddly, that's the only animal I saw that did list "she-animal" as an alternative to the normal name) and a female sheep is a ewe.

I agree. In India, we are used to prefix ‘she’ as an alternative to refer to female animals particularly in spoken English when you are not in a position to recall the exact female equivalent. . Certain animals like she-wolf, she-camel, she-goat are in common use. In specific cases, such as: a cow producing a baby is called a calf which can be both male and female. You can not ditnguish a calf by gender. When it is female we call it a she-calf.

 

[BobK]

I agree mostly with Gillnetter, but I think the female wolf is really called a 'she-wolf'. A bitch too, but similar to fox/vixen, there's another word other than bitch for female wolf.

:up: Interested people could do a Google search for 'Akela' - Rudyard Kipling always called her a she-wolf. (The 'Akela' in my Wolf Cub pack - the old term for Cub Scout - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - may have been a bitch, but that's another story... ;-)

b

 

[BobK]

PS I'm not sure whether that Wikipedia article made it clear, but in the late '50s/early '60s the adult helpers who organized the 'Wolf Cub Pack' (it was called a 'pack') had the names of animals who featured in Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book (and Book 2, I think - we briefly had a 'Rikki Tikki Tavi' - and that mongoose didn't figure in the first book). So the 'Akela' I mentioned was in fact a woman.

b

 

[Tdol]

Can I add a 'she' prefix to any animal name to make a female animal name?

In conversation, if you didn't know the correct word, it would be an OK way to get your point across- people would know what you meant.

 

[mmasny]

Do you use "he-" this way?