For no reason at all, please give me your favourite cow-related figures of speech!

[legendarybassoon@mamot.fr]

@sundogplanets Many French phrases with cows, most of them unflatteting (for the cows, I mean).

"To talk like a spanish cow" -> to be unable to talk properly (probably "basque espagnol" was transmuted into "vache espagnole")

We don't say "pigs", but "cows" for cops (this one comes from German : Wache -> vache). Lots of "death to the cows" graffiti around.

[nest@infosec.exchange]

@sundogplanets

here is a fun idiom: "milking a dead cow". used to describe continued investments into bitcoin and ai.

[jetlagjen@gts.phillipsuk.org]

@sundogplanets Mum brought me up on a rich diet of silly poems, including:

How does a brown cow
Make white milk
When it only eats green grass?

I don't know
And you don't know
And neither does the cow.


And when she's laying on her thickest Norn Iron (Northern Ireland) accent, one of her goto phrases is "How now, brown cow?" which comes out more like "Hoi noi broin coi?"

[ccferrie@mastodon.ie]

@sundogplanets Cows feature a lot in Irish folklore - the Irish word for "road" is "bóthar" which comes from the word for "cow", "bó", because the first roads were used for driving cows.

[sundogplanets@mastodon.social]

@steve199nwep I use this skit in my astronomy classes all the time to talk about astronomers trying to learn about other galaxies!