1066, England. The Normans don't just take the throne. They take the language of meat itself. Anglo-Saxon peasants raise the animals using Anglo-Saxon words: cow, pig, sheep, deer. These are the words for labour. For watching something grow that you'll never eat. When slaughtered, it becomes Norman French: beef, pork, mutton, venison. These are the words for food. For the nobleman's table. The peasant who raised the cow for three years calls it "cow" until a Norman lord's servant leads it away. Then it becomes "boeuf." A word the peasant might never speak because he'll never eat it. This isn't accidental language mixing. It's a perfect record of who does the work and who reaps the reward. The Anglo-Saxon raises it. The Norman eats it. A peasant family tends their pigs for a year. When the lord's men collect the tax pig, it becomes "porc." It crosses a linguistic barrier the moment it crosses the class barrier. The family keeps perhaps one pig yearly, smoked and rationed across months. The lord eats pork three times per week. This dual vocabulary persists for 800 years. Eight centuries of reminding the English peasant that the animal is yours to raise but the meat belongs to someone else. You work with cows. They eat beef. You tend pigs. They dine on pork. The Anglo-Saxon language has words for the animals but French has words for the food because Anglo-Saxons weren't allowed to think of animals as food. Their role was maintenance. Feeding. Breeding. Slaughter when commanded. Then hand it over and watch it disappear. Modern nutritionists telling working people to eat more plants and less meat aren't innovating. They're continuing an 800-year tradition of convincing the masses that meat isn't for them. The vocabulary changed but the message is the same: know your place, stick to grain, leave the protein for your betters. Your ancestors weren't allowed to eat the cow they raised. You're told beef will raise your cholesterol.1066, England. The Normans don't just take the throne. They take the language of meat itself.
— Sama Hoole (@SamaHoole) December 12, 2025
Anglo-Saxon peasants raise the animals using Anglo-Saxon words: cow, pig, sheep, deer. These are the words for labour. For watching something grow that you'll never eat.
When… pic.twitter.com/SgS9w7sXlJ
Different justification. Same result. The people doing the work don't get the meat.
