Sunday, May 31, 2009

bellwether

My new word since looking up sheep for this book I'm working on is wether.

None of my spellcheckers can find it.

It's a castrated male sheep (or goat, for that matter), like the steer of the ovine world. Apparently, the flavor of mutton isn't as affected by male hormones as beef is, but rams can be extra aggressive and you really don't need quite so many rams running around, fighting each other and ripping out each others' wool, as you have ewes. You pretty much have one or two prize rams and wether the other males (yes, it's a verb, too). And then you keep the rams out of the flock until it's time to breed, or you get lambs year round and don't know when your ewes are pregnant and so on.

Apparently, it can be used for an *ahem* intact ram as well, but it's generally not. It does come from the Middle English word for ram.

A bellwether, then, is the lead sheep, the one who wears a bell and who makes the most noise and/or runs the fastest if a predator approaches. You can also hear it coming and you know that if he turns right, then they all turn right. Like if Ohio votes blue then the Democrat will probably win the presidency.

A wether eye is the wary eye of the lead sheep, looking out for trouble.

See, I always figured it was bellweather and was a bell that would ring if the wind blew too hard. or something. I don't think I ever thought about it, to be honest and if I ever used it, I probably misspelled it.

In the second case, nowadays it's generally spelled weather eye and I'm not sure if that's a corruption that has become the norm or if it has always been keeping a wary eye on the weather - literally and metaphorically - and has been confused with wether eye right from the start.

1 comment:

Neefer said...

Imagine what that would do to the Whether the weather be fine tongue twister!

Whether the wether be fine
or
whether the wether be not.