The Words We Use and How They Define Us

[SOLANCO]

Read through a thread here with a lot of talk about whether we "harvest" or "kill" animals. I am sure it does not matter a damn to the dead animal, whether he has been harvested or killed. It is curious how and why we choose different words to identify identical events. Let me throw another word choice into the bubbling discussion.
When you kill, or harvest, a deer? Do you process it? Or do you butcher it?
Years ago a cousin raised a champion steer every other year to compete in the county fair. After the blue ribbon it went for meat. Wish I could remember for sure, but I would bet she said it was butchered. Processed not likely in her vocabulary.
There are brutal constants and truths in life. Dressing them in soft words has never been a good idea.

 

[64Springer]

My opinion on Killed vs Harvested has already been established.

Brass unmen cases are "Processed". Because their is a lengthy and mechanical process to it.

Animals are "Butchered". Because the burly dude holding the butcher knife in the back of the meat shop is called the Butcher. Not the Processor.

After I kill a deer, I do not "Field Dress" it. I "Gut" it. Because I take a knife with a gut hook on it, slice open the hide and remove the guts.

To go any further would take on a political tone, but this is not in the Politics Section of the forum. So I'll refrain.

 

[user 31232]

Read through a thread here with a lot of talk about whether we "harvest" or "kill" animals. I am sure it does not matter a damn to the dead animal, whether he has been harvested or killed. It is curious how and why we choose different words to identify identical events. Let me throw another word choice into the bubbling discussion.
When you kill, or harvest, a deer? Do you process it? Or do you butcher it?
Years ago a cousin raised a champion steer every other year to compete in the county fair. After the blue ribbon it went for meat. Wish I could remember for sure, but I would bet she said it was butchered. Processed not likely in her vocabulary.
There are brutal constants and truths in life. Dressing them in soft words has never been a good idea.

Reckon you have a point. We harvest corn,beans etc. A kill is what it is. I guess I used the more common expressions harvest,field dress and so on because its what I always heard. I don't knock how any one expressing themselves however they want just so long as they don't go ballastic about it all. Good point mr. Solanco

 

[andy52]

I'll give you, my youth. There wasn't harvesting wild animals it was killing and butchering. Domestic animals were considered harvesting.

 

[CuNosecap]

99% of the population thinks chicken come from styrofoam trays, so they know you neither butcher nor harvest chicken!

 

[Kansas Jake]

The comment about a butcher butchering got me thinking.

Butchers butcher but they also process the meat. Now a commercial packing plant processes a critter. They may do it all from the slaughter to final processing or send the carcass to a processor to be cut up and boxed.

At least we don’t take deer to the slaughterhouse since we hopefully have already accomplished that act.

 

[SOLANCO]

Language is a funny thing. To what extent do we define our words? To what extent do our words define us?
In Europe during WWII juden might send you to death at Auschwitz. But in other mouths would identify you as a resistance hero. Today, and on this forum, liberal is nearly a term of opprobrium. Not so much so when FDR was trying to pull our fat from the fire of the Great Depression. Now the label conservative has a value that varies depending on how much one believes in government's ability to solve long standing societal problems.
It is, I think, refreshing that some meanings do not vary.

 

[mikesto44]

Just to make it easy to understand. Animals are killed and butchered to eat. Vegetables and crops are harvested to eat or use to feed livestock.
Or look at it this way...meat eaters food poops on vegetarians food... You can thank me for simplifying this for ya........lol

 

[Rawhide67]

It's simple. Using nice words allows many to distance themselves from the reality that they are eating another living being. Maybe they killed it and butchered it, but feel better about harvesting and processing it.

Weak society where changing words somehow changes the reality of a situation. Had this discussion years ago with a co worker when someone used the word retarded. My co worker had a daughter with "special needs" and found the term retarded to be offensive. I advised him that I have a sister who has "special needs" or is "differently abled" or "physically/intellectually challenged". Use whatever term you want to make you feel better. That's all it boils down to. Doesn't change a damn thing about what my sister can or can't do.

Hell, we live in a world where words don't really mean anything anymore anyway. Change the meaning to suit your needs.

 

[mushka]

I think that city folk and country folk by way of their raising use different language to express ideas. Where a person raised in a hunting family would probably use a different word for the processing of a dead animal from the kill to the butchering of same than a person that was raised in a family that primarily lived in town. The early times in life probably has much to do with a person's use of language.

 

[necchi]

There are brutal constants and truths in life. Dressing them in soft words has never been a good idea.

A lot of it has to do with regional culture and dialog.
There a quizzes out there, answer 20 questions and they can tell where you live.
I go get groceries and grab a cart, down south they grab a buggy, in cali they drive a buggy on the dunes,

 

[SOLANCO]

A lot of it has to do with regional culture and dialog.
There a quizzes out there, answer 20 questions and they can tell where you live.
I go get groceries and grab a cart, down south they grab a buggy, in cali they drive a buggy on the dunes,

LOL around here what the Amish call a carriage we call a buggy.

 

[Marshhawk]

Interesting on the word usage. In my long-ago youth, my dad and others of his generation often used "skin 'em out" for animals such as squirrels, rabbits, which included the gutting and cutting up, but would say "dress 'em" or "dress 'em out" for deer and birds. Maybe that was just an Ohio River Valley thing.

 

[Britsmoothy]

Well I go crow bashing and squirrel splatting.
Is that ok.
Is it ok to say dirt nap out loud still?

 

[Eterry]

The English language is a very fluid thing, constantly modifying and changing. Check out the original definitions of " Awful, Cheater, Furniture, or Girl, Fellow, Bastard". They're nothing like today's usages.

My Dad would sing a song written in the early 1900s. It had a line about a Gay Brother...of coarse they meant happy go lucky. In the 1980s and 90s he'd sing it at local cowboy events and I'd wanna hide.
I asked him to change the words, he told me he'd sing it the way he learned it in the 1930s.

Read Theodore Roosevelt on hunting. He used a dialog and diction from his time. I've had to read his stories more than once to get the gist.

How about Shakespeare?
Imagine writing about your latest hunting outing in the style of his time. " Hark, Yonder over Heather and Moor awaited deer, Large in Stature as Mature in Years." Lol.

Time marches on for us all, and with it our vocabulary changes.

 

[Eterry]

And by the by.. every locale, state, province, and family may have different uses for the same words. As do many professions.
Cops, nurses, Dr's, electricians, musicians, you name it; they all have a certain vernacular.

E.g.
"You killed out there tonight. You butchered that song, but next act really murdered it. "

 

[oldwood]

Back in the 1970's , I made a new hunting friend. We went squirrel hunting , and after killing a few , he suggested we , " Knock" , the guts out of the squirrels , and get them on ice. No where in all of Pa. , did I ever hear that term for evisceration of an animal.Just a local , family terminology , I guess.

 

[Patocazador]

"Killed" and "Butcher" for me. Harvest denotes that you raised it either a crop or an animal. Process is non-descriptive. My bank can process a loan application

 

[longcruise]

There a quizzes out there, answer 20 questions and they can tell where you live.

Take one of those quizzes using a VPN and see what it says about where you live.

 

[COTNTOP]

Here we don't harvest or butcher game, we clean it. That is the term I was brought on and am hearing a little different terminology now. Oh about to forget, I kilt it over on the yon side.