TURKEY

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TURKEY

Postby Dr. Goodword » Fri Nov 28, 2008 1:00 am

• turkey •

Pronunciation: têr-kee • Hear it!

Part of Speech: Noun

Meaning: 1. A large domestic food bird with a fan tail and a head and neck covered with a mass of bare skin, a favorite main course in the US on Thanksgiving and Christmas. 2. A stupid person. 3. A very bad piece of performance art, such as a play, movie, or symphony. 4. (Oldish) Nothing, not a word, diddledy, squat: "She never said turkey to me about it."

Notes: Animals often get bad raps from the words we use: squirrelly, hare-brained, catty, piggy—all reflect human prejudices about animals that we interact with. A widely held fallacy is that turkeys look up at the sky with their beaks open during rainstorms and drown as a result. This misconception led to the conclusion that turkeys are stupid birds, hence the second and third meanings of today's holiday word.

In Play: We have now examined the word for the sound turkeys make, gobble, and the concept it contributed to, gobbledygook; it is time to look at the name of the animal itself. In addition to stupidity, turkeys are associated with plain speaking, as in "to talk turkey", but also in doing anything plainly, as in "to quit smoking cold turkey". For more about these phrases, read Dr. Goodword's Language Blog.

Word History: When Europeans began consuming exotic birds, they had problems keeping up with where they came from. Our ancestors initially thought that guinea fowl came from Turkey, so they first called guinea fowl turkey-hens and turkey-cocks. Once the origin of the guinea fowl was correctly ascertained, the names turkey-hen and turkey-cock were left over, so they were transferred to what we call turkeys today. Thus, turkey comes from the name of the land of the Turk by means of two mistakes. But the English were not the only ones to mistake the origin of turkeys. Other Europeans came to the conclusion that turkeys came from India, hence the Russian name indushka, Polish indyk, and French dinde from coq d'Inde "bird of India". In Portuguese a turkey is called a peru!
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Postby skinem » Fri Nov 28, 2008 9:06 am

Thanks, Doc! You're no turkey and I'll never say turkey about this site being a turkey.

I wonder how the 4th definition came about. I'd never heard it before. Think it springs out of the idea of talking turkey, i.e. straight talk?

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Postby Cacasenno » Fri Nov 28, 2008 12:37 pm

In Italy a turkey is a 'tacchino'. Clearly onomatopoeic but originally even here in Italy the turkey was associated with Turkey.
We had other novelties coming from the New World which we still associate with Turkey, one being corn (mais) which is quite often called 'granturco', turkey wheat.
Why this singular mixing of origins was (is) so widespread throughout Europe?
At the end of the Middle Ages, Europeans "discovered" many new things and customs, at first coming from a more extensive knowledge of the Ottoman culture (Turkish-Arab, with long standing links with Asia and Africa) and, immediately afterwards, also arriving from the New World and from the Far East. We ended up mistaking the origin of some of this "oddities" as arriving from Turkey (i.e. an "exotic", "strange" land or culture) instead the New West or the New East (or from the East while it was from the West etc).
One basically accurate reference to the New World, still in current usage, is the Italian expression 'vale un perù', worth a Peru, standing for worth a lot (of riches), now primarily used as a metaphor.


P.S. Guinea fowls? :)

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Re: TURKEY

Postby scw1217 » Sat Nov 29, 2008 10:00 am

A widely held fallacy is that turkeys look up at the sky with their beaks open during rainstorms and drown as a result. This misconception led to the conclusion that turkeys are stupid birds, hence the second and third meanings of today's holiday word.
When my daughter was in 1st grade we took a class field trip to a local farm and I distinctly remember the field guide telling the class this very fact. She said they had to run the birds inside when it rained because they'd stand outside and drown.
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Fact?

Postby Dr. Goodword » Sat Nov 29, 2008 1:10 pm

...I distinctly remember the field guide telling the class this very fact.
Careful, scw1217: not fact, but urban legend . . . or would this one be a rural legend?
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Re: Fact?

Postby scw1217 » Sat Nov 29, 2008 9:22 pm

...I distinctly remember the field guide telling the class this very fact.
Careful, scw1217: not fact, but urban legend . . . or would this one be a rural legend?
:o Oh! My goof. I should have chosen a better word. :D
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Goofs

Postby Dr. Goodword » Sat Nov 29, 2008 11:50 pm

Well, this website is about finding the right word to use but sometimes it just isn't there and can't be found even at alphaDictionary--but we're working on it. I come up foggy on such searches, too, at times.
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Re: Fact?

Postby Slava » Sun Nov 30, 2008 9:46 pm

:o Oh! My goof. I should have chosen a better word. :D
One way to avoid the problem is to use quotes. That signals that you're questioning the "fact."
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Postby Stargzer » Mon Dec 01, 2008 11:17 pm

I have read that some domesticated turkeys need to have some small, brightly-colored pebbles mixed in with their feed. They peck at the bright pebbles and manage to get some food that way. Remember, these birds are bred for breast and leg meat, not brains!

(Speaking of breeding, the words "bred" and "bread" always remind me of a Three Stooges episode from World War II that I saw only once on a Stooges Marathon a few years ago. The Stooges are dressed in Japanese uniforms for a magazine cover photo shoot, but somehow during their lunch break get mixed up with some Nazi spies who are waiting for the real Japanese spies / saboteurs. They are introduced to three female Nazi spies: "This is Madame Zweibak, Madame Pumpernickel, and Madame Weissbrot." Moe replies with one of the best puns and Nazi put-downs I can ever remember: "I can see that you're all well bred." The Stooges eventually overcome all the spies and Democracy is safe for another day, but not, of course, from the Stooges! Alas, the WWII episodes are rarely broadcast, since those who were our enemies are now our friends. Doo-doo-doo-dooo, doo-dooo. DOO!)

(Ah, yes; speaking of Turkeys, that brings to mind an Agora long ago and far away, in which a somewhat new poster was pontificating that the use of "turkey" in meaning number 2, a stupid person, was no longer current. I tried to set him straight in a light-hearted manner. Unfortunately, I wasn't wearing my Nomex coveralls that day. Said pontificator proceeded, in my opinion, to show himself to be the the archetypical turkey.)
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Postby Stargzer » Mon Dec 01, 2008 11:53 pm

More on moron turkeys:

Snopes.com dispells the drowning myth but does say that:
Nonetheless, this legend does have a couple of marginally-related aspects of truth to it:

Domesticated turkeys are not necessarily "stupid," but because they have been bred in captivity for so many generations, they lack the survival skills of their wild cousins: They're weak, they're fat, they're not agile, they can't run very fast, and they can't fly. All of this makes it more difficult for them to survive on their own in an unprotected environment, so when something unusual occurs (such as a storm), they tend to panic. Frightened domestic turkeys will usually run as best they can until they reach a corner or fence or some other barrier to progress, but even then they may continue their efforts to escape, piling onto each other and possibly suffocating those at the bottom of the heap.

Most domesticated turkeys are raised in confinement for the first several weeks of their lives, so it takes some time for them to become adjusted to living in an outdoor environment. If young turkeys encounter rain during their first few days outdoors, before they've "figured out" how to live in that environment, they can be much more vulnerable to accidents precipitated by panic or inexperience.
I'm still chasing down the colored pebbles legend.
Regards//Larry

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Postby Stargzer » Mon Dec 01, 2008 11:56 pm

One more Snopes account, this one marginally related to the Turducken. Read the second story--it'll really crack you up!
Regards//Larry

"To preserve liberty, it is essential that the whole body of the people always possess arms, and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them."
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Postby Stargzer » Tue Dec 02, 2008 12:15 am

AHA!

From a .pdf at Auburn University, Animal Nutrition Handbook Section 12: Poultry Nutrition and Feeding, on page 10 of the .pdf:
4. Feeding Turkeys
A. Marketing turkeys:

...

3) Upon arrival, poults should be encouraged to consume feed and water as soon as possible - Using colored feed or placing brightly colored marbles in the feed and water may help.
I did find several articles about putting pebbles in the water troughs for newly-hatched birds (quail, ducks, geese), but that is to allow them to get a drink of water without drowning in it.

So it appears that as with humans, the young can be pretty dumb at times!
Regards//Larry

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Postby skinem » Tue Dec 02, 2008 11:37 am

It's amazing to me how different the domesticated bird is from it's wild cousin. I have quite a number of wild turkeys that are on my property, and they are not stupid! Very, very alert. I've heard they can fly at speeds up to 40 mph and I believe it.

Reminds me of a WKRP episode--http://www.hulu.com/watch/322/wkrp-in-c ... rkeys-away

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Domesticated Turkeys

Postby Dr. Goodword » Tue Dec 02, 2008 11:57 pm

I can recall from my childhood domesticated turkeys wandering free, along with chickens and guinea fowl, around my grandmother's house. Although they were fed grain, they wandered into nearby fields and ate seeds there.

Like ducks, when cooked, all turkey meat was dark and had flavor, something sorely lacking in those raised in the turkey concentration camps of today.

We now have domesticated pheasant which are likewise tasteless. The wild pheasant around our house are, too, all dark meat with a breath-taking flavor.

Turkeys may be stupid but at least they had taste at one time.
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