Animal epithet

Animal similes and metaphors have been used since classical times, for example by Homer and Virgil, to heighten effects in literature, and to sum up complex concepts concisely.

In the Iliad, Homer compares the Trojans to stridulating grasshoppers, which the classicist Gordon Lindsay Campbell believes to imply that they make a lot of noise but are weaker and less determined than they think.

Campbell argues that Dido's people are hardworking, strong, unfailingly loyal, organised, and self-regulating: just the sort of world that the hero Aeneas would like to create.

[2] Epithets are sometimes used in political campaigns; in 1890, the trades unionist Chummy Fleming marched with a group of unemployed people through the streets of Melbourne, displaying a banner with the message "Feed on our flesh and blood you capitalist hyenas: it is your funeral feast".

[4] Epithets are not limited to mammals; for instance, comparing someone to a snail means they are (extremely) slow,[5] while calling them a slug implies they are lazy and loathsome.

[12] The Hungarian linguists Katalin Balogné Bérces and Zsuzsa Szamosfalvi found in a preliminary survey of Serbian usage that the most commonly used "animal vocatives" were, in order, 1. pig, 2. chick(en), 3. dog/puppy, 4. cow, 5. monkey, 6. hen, 7. rat, 8. turkey, 9. mouse, 10. snake, 11. cat/kitten, 12. fox, 13. lamb, 14. vixen, 15. worm.

Some, like Pigg (1066), Hogg (1079) and Hoggard, Hogarth (1279) are metonyms for a swineherd,[18] while Oxer (1327) similarly denotes an oxherd[19] and Shepherd (1279 onwards; also Shepard, Sheppard, etc.)

[20] Surnames that mention animals can also be toponymic, the names Horscroft, Horsfall, Horsley and Horstead for example all denoting people who came from these villages associated with horses.

[24] It is not always easy to tell whether a nickname was friendly, humorous or negative, but the surname Stallion, with variants Stallan, Stallen and Stallon, (1202 onwards) is certainly pejorative, meaning "a begetter, a man of lascivious life".

Leopard's Head box, 19th century. Wood with metal tags, used to hold kola nuts in the royal court of Benin , where leopard was an epithet for a powerful person.
Odysseus , slaughtering Penelope's suitors on his return home at the end of the Odyssey , is compared by Homer to a lion. [ 1 ] Bell- krater , c. 330 BC
The painter William Hogarth 's name is a metonym for a swineherd . [ 18 ] Self-portrait with his dog, 1745