Meat

Like the English degree wielding wench  I am, today I have been theorizing. About meat. Drag your minds back from the dirty place, I am actually talking about the food. I like meat. Yum.

The meat of the animals we most commonly consume is usually referred to by a different word than we use for the animal itself. Examples: pig=pork, cow=beef, deer=venison. My theory here is that we give meat names different names than the animal in order to distance ourselves from the act of killing and eating real live breathing things. Even if they are delicious.

Chickens are, of course an exception. When I'm going to eat a chicken I say "Hey! I'm going to eat a chicken." There's no tiptoeing around it. Because chickens are annoying poopy creatures whose only purpose in existing is to be eaten, preferably fried in delicious breading and hot sauce. HOWEVER!! The other primary exception to my brilliant award-winning theory is fish. Why? What did fish ever do to us? Nothing. Jaws is pure propaganda, probably funded by Nazis. But the truth is fish are just cute little bubble blowing swimmy things that we kill and eat without even the courtesy of trying to mask the act with a simple word.

So my suggestion is that we insert a new word into the English vernacular, a word that means fish meat. Somebody get on that.