Or one could troll taxonomists by suggesting "bat"?
Quite the contrary! I read a humorous rethinking of taxonomy once (faint traces in my long-term memory think it might have been this but it's remarkably hard to google up anything detailed enough to confirm or deny) which subdivided the obvious category of flying animals into the subcategories "Things Which Fly Straight" (birds) and "Things Which Refuse To Fly Straight" (insects), and on that basis decreed "Bats are flying insects and I will not budge from this position."
From the Biblical perspective, the bat is indeed a bird.
(This does not mean the ancient Israelites were wrong, just that they were using a different definition of "bird" from us. See further the narrator's take on whether a whale is a fish in Moby-Dick.)
Mmm. But whereas various English words like "nice" and "naughty" have drifted considerably in meaning over the centuries, in this case it might simply be that "צִפּוֹר" doesn't translate exactly as "bird"?
Though I admit I wouldn't be at all surprised to learn that "bird" had also included bats at some point in the history of the English language…
The OED says that in English bats "were formerly classed as birds" and gives the quotation from 1340, "Bringen her a nihte-bird . a bakke . or an oule."
In Old English a bat was a hreaðemūs — "The first element may represent the stem of Old English hrēran to move, to shake, to agitate". Later this became rearmouse or reremouse, which survived in some rural dialects and in heraldry.
The word bakke comes from a Scandinavian language (perhaps Danish) and first appears in the 14th century; this became bat by the late 16th century.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2012-05-31 10:04 am (UTC)Loon. Gander.
And maybe you coot in order to give someone cooties?
Or one could troll taxonomists by suggesting "bat"?
(no subject)
Date: 2012-05-31 01:31 pm (UTC)Quite the contrary! I read a humorous rethinking of taxonomy once (faint traces in my long-term memory think it might have been this but it's remarkably hard to google up anything detailed enough to confirm or deny) which subdivided the obvious category of flying animals into the subcategories "Things Which Fly Straight" (birds) and "Things Which Refuse To Fly Straight" (insects), and on that basis decreed "Bats are flying insects and I will not budge from this position."
(no subject)
Date: 2012-06-01 07:24 am (UTC)(This does not mean the ancient Israelites were wrong, just that they were using a different definition of "bird" from us. See further the narrator's take on whether a whale is a fish in Moby-Dick.)
(no subject)
Date: 2012-06-01 09:32 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-06-01 09:37 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-06-01 09:48 am (UTC)Though I admit I wouldn't be at all surprised to learn that "bird" had also included bats at some point in the history of the English language…
(no subject)
Date: 2012-06-01 03:36 pm (UTC)In Old English a bat was a hreaðemūs — "The first element may represent the stem of Old English hrēran to move, to shake, to agitate". Later this became rearmouse or reremouse, which survived in some rural dialects and in heraldry.
The word bakke comes from a Scandinavian language (perhaps Danish) and first appears in the 14th century; this became bat by the late 16th century.