Tag: Turkey

Turkey (repost)

As Thanksgiving approaches, I’m busy giving thanks with some family visiting Ireland from the states. So, I thought I would dish up this post from the archives on the holiday’s main attraction: the origin of “turkey.”

It turns out the bird and the country don’t just make for junior high geography jokes or World War I mnemonics. They’re actually connected–dare I say–at the thigh. Well, sort of.

Turkey

Originally, turkey–or turkey-cock (attested in 1541) and turkey-hen, back when our intimacy with where our food comes from necessitated such distinctions–referred to the guinea fowl, a bird native to sub-Saharan Africa.

The guinea fowl (or guineafowl), courtesy of Encyclopedia Britannica Online and Index Open.

According to some historians, these African guinea fowl made their way into Europe during the Middle Ages through the Turkish Ottoman Empire, which controlled much of North Africa, southern Europe, and the Middle East. So-called “turkey merchants” traded the birds and other goods and wares.

In the early 16th-century, Spanish conquistadors imported into Europe what we now think of as the turkey, domesticated by the Aztecs in Mexico as early as 800 BC, through the Turkish-dominated Mediterranean, whereupon English-speaking peoples misidentified this bird with the African guinea fowl. (Apparently, corn was also known as turkey corn or turkey wheat due to the same Turkey-by-way-of-Spain-by-way-of-the-New-World channel.) The English name for the American bird stuck, even after the Portuguese brought back–and correctly distinguished from its distant American cousin–guinea fowl from West Africa. Cookbooks from the late 1500s and early 1600s provide evidence that the turkey was already a centerpiece at English feasts, including Christmas.  As for why we came to eat turkey for Christmas and Thanksgiving, Slate offers a digestible bit of food anthropology here.

The Ancient Greeks called the guinea fowl μελεαγρίς, apparently a reference to the Meliagrides, sisters of the Argonaut Meleager, leader of the famed Calydonian boar hunt. Upon Meleager’s tragic death, his sisters were changed into guinea hens. Father of modern taxonomy Carl Linnaeus used the name to classify the genus of the North American bird (Meleagris gallopavo), while the name also identifies a common species of the African guinea fowl (Numida meleagris).

Talking turkey

As for the Turkish? They call the bird hindi. It means “Indian,” and is probably from the French poulet d’inde, or “chicken from India.” Lest we forget, those European explorers–um, conquerors and colonists–did think the New World was Asia. Hence, the West Indies. Hindi and Indian? Yes, they are related. 

And as for Turkey? Turkey is named for the Turks. Romans in the Middle Ages called it Turcus and the Greeks, Tourkos. These come from the Persian national name turk, which folklore glosses as “strength,” but can mean “beautiful youth,” “barbarian,” or “robber.” There is an early Chinese word, tu-kin, referring to a people in the mountains of east-central Asia, who may be connected to ancient ancestors of the Turks.

None of this may be turkey shoot, except for cold turkey. Cold turkey–suddenly and completely withdrawing from drugs, originally heroin (and later chocolate), including the intense symptoms therein–is attested in 1910, 1921, or 1936, depending on your source. Thanksgiving leftovers testify that cold turkey requires very little work, thus the original sense of “without preparation.” A cold shoulder (of mutton) is related, “considered a poor man’s dish and thus, perhaps, something one would set out for an unwanted guest with deliberate intention to convey displeasure,” the Online Etymology Dictionary delightfully observes. But let’s not leave our Canadian friends out, where Parson notes cold turkey refers to door-to-door selling or salesmen, perhaps for the same low-prep reasons. 

As for “talking turkey,” Parson defines it as talking “business” or “sense,” with turkey standing for “the substantial and succulent part of a (Christmas) dinner.”

Oh, and that thing dangling from the turkey’s neck? That’s called a wattle. It’s a fleshy caruncle. Birds (and other animals) also have dewlaps and snoods. Apparently, when we named the anatomy of birds, Linnaeus left the room and Dr. Suess took his place. Folds of skin: bon appetit, right?

Whatever’s on your table and whatever you are celebrating this week, enjoy your holiday, give thanks, be safe, and, by all means, avoid fleshy caruncles.

m ∫ r ∫

Coping with “coups”

Over this past weekend, Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan quelled an attempted military coup. While failed, the coup still delivered a harsh “blow” to the country – and lived up to its own etymology.

Coup

A military coup is short for a coup d’état, which literally means a “stroke of state” in French. The “stroke” characterizes a coup’s sudden, usually violent overthrow of a government. According to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), English has been using the shortened coup since at least 1852, the full French phrase since 1646.

In French, a coup is a widely used term for a “blow,” as in a really hard hit. (The English “hit” might well parallel coup’s versatility.) Other borrowed phrases, like coup de grâce, also feature coup. The word derives from a series of Latin forms, colpus and colapus and colaphus yet before them, ultimately borrowed from the Greek κόλαϕος (kolaphos), a “cuff” or “buffet,” like a box on the ears.

For the origin of the Greek kolaphos, the American Heritage Dictionary of Indo-European Roots proposes the Proto-Indo-European *kel-, “to strike.” We previously encountered this hypothetical root in the “twiggy lot” of clerk.

Cashing in on coups?

English first borrowed French’s coup in the early 16th century when it referred to a physical “blow” – and when it’s final p was pronounced. It borrowed it again in the 18th century, using it figuratively and, like in French, issuing a lethal coup to that last letter. But English had been using coup in verbal forms since the 14th century. The verbal coup was from the French couper, “to strike,” via that same coup.

Now, cope was a variant of this coup: Starting with “strike,” cope evolved to mean “to engage in combat,” “contend,” and “face successfully.” It then made the metaphorical jump to actions we need to take after a coup: to cope with. The connecting sense is “managing” or “dealing with something,” as one does in a conflict. The OED attests the modern, psychological-shaded cope with in 1934.

In French, couper went on to mean “cut,” making coupon a “piece cut off.” English cut off coupon from French in 1822, when a coupon specifically referred to a certificate attached to a bond which could be cut off and presented as a payment on interest. In 1864, a travel agent, Thomas Cook, extended the sense of coupon to a series of pre-payed tickets a traveller used along different points of a journey (e.g., for a hotel, a meal). English cashed in Cook’s usage for its modern coupon.

A two-door coupe or coupé car is a “cut” car. The term comes from the French carrosse coupé, a “cut carriage,” a kind of shorter, hence “cut,” four-wheel carriage.

Turkey’s coup was no mere political metaphor: Nearly 300 died. And how will Erdoğan cope with the coup dissidents? Not with coupons. And certainly not with coupes. He’s promising to throw some harsh, retributive, and, yes, literal coups of his own.

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