One of my weird dreams prompts an odd question: Is this a real term?
Part of the dream was visuals of islands somewhere, sheep grazing. BBC sounding narration over the visual "The larger island has almost 800 wool on it, and the smaller one we can see to the southeast has about 450 wool on it...."
Does any culture call a sheep a wool?
That just seemed odd....
I've heard this way of speaking in people who speak English as a second language. I've often wondered if it was a pidgin english way of using the word.
I checked my OED. I saw a reference from 1592 that could be seen as a reference to sheep. The dictionary itself seemed to think it implied to wool in the conventional sense. Within context, I felt it could be used similar to the phrase “pork bellies” where in some circles pork bellies referred to bacon and in others the whole animal.
You can only be young once … but you can be immature forever!
Not referenced as "wool" to the animal, but it has been known that I refer to them as "woollies" as in 'we better round up the woollies today and check for fly strike' [coincidentally that always seemed to be the trigger for cooking rice for dinner!]
Depending how much mischief said woollies had been into, they were also referred to using names that are unfit for publication
Life's too short, eat dessert first! [Source of quote unknown]
You have to be warped to weave [ditto!]
In the northern great planes region sheep were often called wooly backs. Its in many of the pioneer stories. But very long ago they were know as "ba" the exact sound they make. So knowing this, if your breed of sheep makes a "wool" sound when calling it certainly reasonable that it was called as such in ancient times. My sources on this are the evo sheep project and my own readings of history of shepherding.
Mr. Ransom has a great thought as much is lost in translation. It’s not hard to strike up a conversation about someone’s wool hat as they’re often hand made and regional. Even in a different language, you can figure out what words for wool and sheep Surprised that they’re often the same word, I’ve heard a few times. Wool’. I found in the UK was used to describe someone from the burbs. That was confusing.
Hoo hoo hoo! Looks like we got a live one! Here, wave this tiny ad at it:
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