Cock, as everyone knows, is another name for rooster. Well, it's actually the other way round: rooster is a euphemism for cock. Americans had (and still have) a lot of silly or valid (depending on your personal perspective) taboos about sex. Our language expresses those hang-ups. The wave of changes from British to American English that brought about the use of rooster, also gave way to "donkey" instead of "ass" and "weather vane" instead of "cock vane". Some people even went so far as to refer to "rooster roaches" instead of cockroaches!
Are you wondering where I picked up this bit of trivia? Well, really I did know about Victorian trend of word changing before I got on google this morning. There's a great book by Bill Bryson for those of you interested in language: The Mother Tongue: English and How it Got That Way. I highly recommend it; Bryson is a great author.
That was my first introduction to all of this, then this morning in Casariche during the period where we're supposed to be creating bilingual science worksheets and such, Kristen and I got online and googled the etymology of "rooster". I can't remember why. This is what we found: http://www.abebooks.com/docs/CompanyInformation/PressRoom/2006-Aug-Sep-American-Heritage.pdf (FYI: the article I'm talking about starts on page 3 of the PDF.)
Really, it is worth reading. Very interesting.
So...you COULD validate our google searches with the argument that ultimately we were looking for information about English in order to be more informed, better teachers... right? Anyway, I don't think there's any harm in "wasting" time on the internet when you're learning new things.
Well, that's all.
This is my bit of trivia for the blog, fruit of my endless quest to be a more interesting teacher. ;)
(Ha! It sounds noble when I write it like that!)
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