From: Piotr Gasiorowski
Message: 115
Date: 1999-10-27
----- Original Message -----From: markodegard@...Sent: Wednesday, October 27, 1999 3:00 AMSubject: [cybalist] Cowpokes and Centaurs.Piotr's response is brilliant, unexpectedly so. It was much more than I expected for my rather weak throwaway speculation.First, when I translate into American English the Greek 'centaur' as 'cowpoke', I am using 'cow' in its modern generic sense. Quite recently, 'cow' has taken on the meaning 'any specimen of Bos taurus' in American English. Yes, we know a cow is a female, and many of us are aware a cow is to be distinguished from a heifer for the same reason a mare is distinguished from a filly. But when you ask an American what the common English term for 'any specimen of B. taurus is, about the only answer you get besides 'cow' is 'bovine', 'bovid' or 'a head of cattle'. Cowpokes herd cattle, not just cows.
'Cowpoke' analyzes as 'one who pokes cows'. Compare with the synonymous 'cowpuncher'. Strictly, the English terms seem to mean one who prods, goads, or drives animals. Cattle need to be pushed along, encouraged to move along, sometimes with direct force.
I am not competent to analyze the Greek as Piotr has, but the semantic idea should cross languages. It's part of the normal job to poke, jab, prick, or goad cattle along. Compare Spanish picador, the bull-pricker, the bull-goader; I wonder if English 'cowpoke' is actually a calque from Spanish; American English gets a lot of cattle management words from Spanish.
Are there IE cognates for this usage of *kent? Have I ignorantly stumbled on not merely a Greek word for cowboy, but the PIE term for cowboy? As for *kente:to:r, if it means 'goader of cattle' (in Greek, I presume -- or is this PIE?), it is ever so easy, at least in English, to see how it can be seen as a portmanteau that gives us 'centaur'; the association with bulls is natural -- and it's bulls that need to be goaded the most.
Digging around the Perseus site, I see that the Centaurs were originally howling barbarians from the area in the north ("between Pelion and Ossa"), and only later half-horse half-men. We do have the word 'centaur', and finding an explanation for it is fascinating. When you examine the myth of the Molioniades, you see that these are twins described in terms that suggest a rider and his mount (and a rather loutish example at that).
Are centaurs cowboys? Are they steppe-nomads in earliest Greece, herding cattle from a horse? < html>
At least one scholar (Boisacq) has suggested ('conjecturally') that kentauros means 'somebody who spurs a horse' ('spur' being a possible meaning of kentrom). He was evidently on the right track but lacked an American English background. As far as I know, he offered no suggestion as to how on earth the second element could mean 'horse'.I'm not sure in what other branches cognates of *kent- survive. Perhaps other Cybalist memebers could help.Piotr