In my last essay, I quoted a definition of “猪” from Xinhua Dictionary. If you consult the Oxford English Dictionary for Advanced Learners, you can find the following definition for pig: an animal with pink, black or brown skin, short legs, a broad nose and a short curly tail. Pigs are kept on farms for their meat (pork) or live in the wild. Interestingly, when compared the English definition with the Chinese one, the reader may find that they coincide with each other. What’s more, in both English and Chinese, “pig” or “猪” are used to refer to an unpleasant or offensive person; a person who is dirty or greedy. In English, pig is also an offensive word for a police officer.

In my last linguistic lecture, I talked about hyponymy. Hyponymy refers to the sense relationship between a more general word and a more specific word. The word which is more general in meaning is called the superordinate, and the more specific words are called its hyponyms to each other.

Let’s take pig for example:

                                                pig (superordinate)

           boar (hyponym)                  sow (hyponym)           piglet (hyponym)

In this diagram, “pig” is the superordinate and “boar, sow and piglet” are the hyponyms.

In English, a male pig that has been castrated (had part of its sex organs removed) and is kept for its meat is called a hog.

Question: What is the term for a female pig whose womb has been removed and is kept for meat?

If you look up the word “warthog” in an English dictionary, you can find a warthog is an African wild pig with two large outer teeth called Tusks and lumps like warts on its face (疣猪). But you should not take it for granted that road hog is also a pig. Actually, it means a person who drives in dangerous way without thinking about the safety of other road users. A road dog is very dangerous. The same is true of Guinea pig. A Guinea pig refers to a small animal with short ears and no tail, often kept as a pet; it also means a person used as medical or other experiments.

In English, there are some interesting idioms such as “make a pig of oneself”, “make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear”, etc. Of the two idioms, which one means to succeed in making sth good out of material that does not seem very good at all; which one means to eat far too much food  at one time? Another amusing idiom is “Pigs might fly”. When you say “pigs might fly”, you mean something will never happen. If you buy a pig a poke, you buy something without seeing it or knowing if it is satisfactory. A difficult or unpleasant thing or task is usually called pig of something.

The word "pig" is also a verb. For example, pig oneself on something means to eat too much of something as in the sentences “I had a whole box of chocolates and pigged the lot. Don’t give me cakes ---- I will just pig myself.”

Some English compounds such as piggyback, pigtails, pig-headed are very funny too. Can you figure out their meaning without consulting the dictionary?