cattle

Distinctions

the English words first

The column starts on the English side, since it holds that English has neat parallels to the Hebrew terms, only without a traceable etymology behind them. A heifer is a young female bovine, especially one that has not yet calved; a cow is a mature female that has calved and so gives milk, though colloquially "cow" covers any bovine at all. On the male side English marks the gelded off from the fertile, the young from the old, and the beast bred for food from the beast bred for work: a bull keeps its testicles and is used for breeding; one castrated young and raised for beef is a steer or bullock, one castrated older a stag; an older castrated beast used for draft work is an ox, though "ox" too is used loosely for any bovine trained to draw.

the five names

Rabbi Eliezer HaKallir's piyut for the second day of Pesach uses five Hebrew words for an ox: par, shor, egel, aleph, bakar. Peirush HaRokeach and Rabbeinu Efrayim find the five alluded to in the law that a thief who steals an ox and then slaughters or sells it pays five times its value (the article prints Shemos 22:37; the locus is Shemos 21:37).

egel (עגל) and eglah (עגלה)

The calf, still nursing. English "calf" serves both sexes; Hebrew has egel for the male and eglah for the female. Rabbi Zalman Hanau (Tzohar HaTeivah): egel from igul, a circle, since young calves are round and pudgy. The Mishnah (Parah 1:1) fixes when the name changes: Rabbi Eliezer holds it is an eglah through its first year and a parah thereafter; the Chachamim hold it stays an eglah through its second year as well.

par (פר) and parah (פרה)

The classical pair, male and female. Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim derives them from the biliteral peh-reish, breaking a thing into smaller parts, whence peirurim (crumbs), eifer (ash), parur (a pot for crumbs and small grains), pri (a fruit, a microcosm of the tree that comes off it), pe'er and tiferes (an all-encompassing beauty made of many aspects), hafarah (dissolving a vow), primah (tearing a garment into shreds), and tefirah (sewing, which repairs primah). Since pri is reproduction, the par is the fertile male, unlike the shor, and the parah is almost always kept for exactly what her name says, calving and milk, only a small minority of females ever being made impotent. Rashi (to Tehillim 69:32; Chullin 60a; Avodah Zarah 8a): a shor is called that from the day it is born (see Vayikra 22:27), while par is a name it takes on only later. Radak (to Tehillim 69:32): a shor is big and a par is small, though he does not say whether he means in age or in build.

shor (שור)

Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim: from the biliteral shin-reish, borrowed from shor or sharir, the umbilical cord (Yechezkel 16:4; Mishlei 3:8; Iyov 40:16). As the cord at the child's navel joins him to his mother and carries all his growth, so the ox holds the core of its strength in its belly. In Aramaic the shin becomes a tav, giving tor; some linguists maintain that the Latin taurus derives from that Aramaic tor. Whether shor means specifically a castrated ox is disputed: many assume it does, but Rabbi Yonah Merzbach argues it cannot, since castrating an animal is forbidden (Vayikra 22:24), so shor and par must stand alike on that question.

aleph (אלף)

Eight appearances in Tanach for cattle (Devarim 7:13, 28:4, 28:18, 28:51; Tehillim 8:8, 50:10; Mishlei 14:4; Yeshayahu 30:24). The letter aleph in the original paleo-Hebrew script (ksav ivri) looked like an ox; that script was borrowed by the Phoenicians and then by the Greeks, and became the standard alphabet. Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim connects it to the biliteral lamed-peh, a strong hold: the chieftain with a firm hold over those under him is an aluf, and the number one must command to earn that title is an elef, a thousand; an aleph is on that reckoning the strongest sort of ox. The Vilna Gaon (to Mishlei 14:4) instead connects aleph to the Aramaic yalif, to learn, though his account of how aleph differs from shor is involved and the column does not reproduce it.

bakar (בקר)

The collective, cattle. Radak (Sefer HaShorashim): the root ב-ק-ר means investigating, seeking, probing. Boker, morning, is from it, the hour light comes and one can begin to discern; bikur cholim likewise is not merely visiting but finding out how the sick man is and what can be done for him. Rabbi Yehoshua Steinberg: bakar is domesticated cattle precisely because such animals need watching, supervision and defense from marauders, and that is the work of the boker or voker, which the column glosses "cowboy" (Amos 7:14), who must also seek out greener pasture for them. Some have claimed the English slang buckaroo, a cowboy, comes from that same boker/voker; but most linguists, the column reports, agree it derives from the Spanish vaquero, from vaca, "cow." Dr. Julian Mason, of the University of North Carolina, argued instead that buckaroo comes from Gullah, the Creole spoken by African-Americans in coastal South Carolina and Georgia, in which buckra means "white man."

Rendering guidance

• שור: "ox." פר: "bull," and in a korban context keep the technical par where the halachah names it (par he'elem davar, par kohen mashiach).
• פרה: "cow," and "heifer" for Parah Adumah by long usage. עגל / עגלה: "calf," with the sex supplied where it matters (Eglah Arufah is a female calf, and that is load-bearing).
• אלף in a pasuk: "ox" or "oxen," in a poetic register; "cattle" flattens it. בקר: "cattle"; בוקר of a person: "herdsman." The column's own gloss is "cowboy," which is accurate but too modern a register for most prose; the preference for "herdsman" is ours.
• Trap: English "ox" will swallow shor, par and aleph at once. Where HaKallir or a Midrash is counting the five names (as with the fivefold payment of Shemos 21:37), the translation has to keep five distinct English words, or the count collapses.
• Second trap: בקר is cattle and בוקר is morning, from one root. Check the vocalization before rendering.
• Do not let "cow" stand for par. The Hebrew pair is sexed, and par is the fertile male on Rabbi Pappenheim's whole reading.

Sources

Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein, "Bovine Words: Cows and Cowboys," What's in a Word?, Ohr Somayach, 17 Tammuz 5779 (2019-07-20), https://articles.ohr.edu/articles/bovine-words-cows-and-cowboys; raw text in sources/whats-in-a-word/raw/8333-bovine-words-cows-and-cowboys.md. Primary loci cited: Shemos 21:37; Vayikra 22:24, 22:27; Devarim 7:13, 28:4, 28:18, 28:51; Yeshayahu 30:24; Amos 7:14; Tehillim 8:8, 50:10, 69:32; Mishlei 3:8, 14:4; Yechezkel 16:4; Iyov 40:16; Parah 1:1; Chullin 60a; Avodah Zarah 8a; Tzohar HaTeivah; Radak, Sefer HaShorashim; Dr. Julian Mason.

Three loci in the article need correcting. It prints the fivefold-payment pasuk as "Ex. 22:37"; the locus is Shemos 21:37. In its list of the eight aleph pesukim it prints "Deut. 7:12" and "28:12"; neither has the word, and the two pesukim that do, and that bring the count to eight, are Devarim 7:13 and 28:18.