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Sunday 6 October 2013

Sunday Rest: hind.

It's very hard to stop a hind sounding like a whine.

Even the most beautiful hinds, like these:

File:Deer female animal head.jpg
Photo by Hillebrand Steve.

are imbued with a hint of the annoying and clingy by reason of their name.

Then there are hind legs, which, however skilled or delicious, are usually only called hind when they're being cocked or balanced upon.


Beatrix Potter

Otherwise a hind is a simple peasant (a simple peasant: not even a complex or interesting peasant, with, say, a long-standing interest in woodlice, folk dance, or botulism).

But pity most of all the fishy sort of a hind:


Coral hind.

Poor things. Their closest relatives are the gropers.

Word Not To Use Today: hind.  The behind sort of hind comes from the Old English hindan, which means at the back; the deer sort of hind comes also from Old English hind and is related to the Greek kemas young deer and the Lithuanian szmúlas hornless. The peasant sort of hind comes from the Old English hine, from hīgan, servant.
 

4 comments:

  1. What? No reference to the Song of Solomon? In which Solomon compares his lover to a beautiful hind? Or was it a goat? I can't remember; something funny though.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. This bit?
      'I charge you, O ye daughters of Jerusalem, by the roes, and by the hinds of the field, that ye stir not up, nor awake my love, till he please.'
      I just thought that Pigling Bland and the fish were more amusing and comprehensible.

      Delete
    2. Umm ... it might be ... I don't recognise it now. I just know it used to make me snigger in Religious Ed.

      Delete
    3. Any RE teacher who chooses to teach the Song of Solomon is asking for sniggers.
      He was probably either a complete idiot or a secret athiest.

      Delete

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