goat

英文词源

goat

goat: [OE] Old English had no all-purpose word for ‘goat’; the male goat was a bucca (‘buck’) and the female goat was a gāt. In early Middle English, goat began to encroach on the semantic territory of buck, and by the 14th century it had come to be the dominant form for both sexes, as is shown by the emergence around that time of the distinguishing terms she-goat and he-goat (nanny-goat and billy-goat are much later – 18th-century and 19th-century respectively). Goat itself comes via prehistoric Germanic *gaitaz (source of German geiss, Dutch geit, Swedish get, and Danish ged) from Indo- European *ghaidos.

This may be related to Lithuanian zaidziu ‘play’, and if so, the goat could be etymologically the ‘animal that jumps about’ (semantic development in the opposite direction has given English caper from Latin caper ‘goat’).

goat (n.)

Old English gat "she-goat," from Proto-Germanic *gaito (cognates: Old Saxon get, Old Norse geit, Danish gjed, Middle Dutch gheet, Dutch geit, Old High German geiz, German Geiß, Gothic gaits "goat"), from PIE *ghaid-o- "young goat," also forming words for "to play" (cognates: Latin hædus "kid").

They are sprightly, capricious, and wanton, and their strong odor (technically called hircine) is proverbial. [Century Dictionary]

The word for "male goat" in Old English was bucca or gatbucca (see buck (n.)) until late 1300s shift to he-goat, she-goat (Nanny goat is 18c., billy goat 19c.). Meaning "licentious man" is attested from 1670s (hence goat-milker, name of a bird formerly believed to suck the milk from goats at night, but also old slang for "a prostitute," also "the female pudendum"). To get (someone's) goat is from 1910, American English, perhaps from French prendre sa chèvre "take one's source of milk," or more likely with notion of "to steal a goat mascot" from a racehorse, warship, fire company, military unit, etc.

... to become separated from your goat is a thing no soldierman is willing to contemplate. ["Letitia, Nursery Corps, U.S.A.," in American Magazine, vol. 64, June 1907]