Talk:pig

Dictionaric says : What about the idea that pig meant "fertile sow" or "fertile female". In scandinavian PIGGE means "girl" !!!

What happened here? I edited the Slovak translation, but after I saved it, many of the translations (including Slovak) simply vanished. How do I fix it?
 * The article looks fine to me - you were probably looking at the preview - it only shows the section you are editing. &mdash; Hippietrail 16:07, 26 Jul 2004 (UTC)

OK, thanks. I have not been here for a while, so I suppose things have changed. :)--Red Prince 17:30, 26 Jul 2004 (UTC)

RFV discussion: December 2014–February 2015
"(UK) a pigeon". Probably added by TopCat back in the day (though perhaps as an IP address, since his user name is not in the history); he added a lot of supposed UK birdwatcher slang for types of bird, some of which was unattestable, e.g. Talk:barny. Equinox ◑ 03:18, 22 December 2014 (UTC)


 * Not in the big OED. No trace in Google Books, nor anywhere on the internet that is searched by Google's crawlers.  There might be some pigeon fancier or birdwatcher somewhere in an obscure British region who abbreviates pigeon that way (the northern abbreviations are pid and piddie but they're hardly attestable).  I think we should delete the entry.    D b f  i  r  s   13:26, 22 December 2014 (UTC)
 * How would that be pronounced? Would one write it that way rather than pidge or, possibly, pige? DCDuring TALK 15:01, 22 December 2014 (UTC)
 * It hadn't occurred to me that pig might be pronounced with a soft g, though, if that was intended, then your suggested spelling: pidge seems more logical.   D b f  i  r  s   00:06, 23 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Never heard of it. Is it a regional term? Which region? Renard Migrant (talk) 15:22, 23 December 2014 (UTC)
 * We have an entry at pidge ("pigeonhole"), which is suggestive of how a pigeon fancier might have shortened pigeon. I haven't found it in print at Books or Usenet. DCDuring TALK 17:23, 23 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Yes, I think we all agree that if there is a regionalism, then it's probably pidge, but even that isn't really attestable in print. I can't find any trace of pig for pigeon anywhere, and I can't even attest pid, that I have heard, and piddie is marginal.  The archaic spelling pidgeon is now vanishingly rare in print, but I recall having a struggle to omit the d when I was learning to spell, possibly because I was familiar with the diminutive "piddie".    D b f  i  r  s   20:26, 23 December 2014 (UTC)


 * RFV failed. Equinox ◑ 23:49, 8 February 2015 (UTC)

Etymology
The lexemes beginning with "p" might be borrowed from English[3]; but those beginning with "b" are likely to be from the same root. There is no evidence of a Germanic root[2] here. Compare very remote forms in Welsh moch[3] and Irish muc[4] (pig): perhaps from the time of the "swine culture invasion"[4]; for the Brittonic form is "*hocc-", akin to Proto-Celtic, from Proto-Indo-European ; as cousin to Proto-Germanic root of Old English sū (sow)[7]. Compare "Peggy" as a corruption of "Margaret"; although such analogy[3] is normally wide of the mark and inappropriate!

[0] means 'Absolutely not; [1] means 'Exceedingly unlikely'; [2] means 'Very dubious'; [3] means 'Questionable'; [4] means 'Possible'; [5] means 'Probable'; [6] means 'Likely'; [7] means 'Most Likely' or *Unattested; [8] means 'Attested'; [9] means 'Obvious' - only used for close matches within the same language or dialect, at linkable periods. Andrew H. Gray 17:33, 7 July 2017 (UTC)Andrew talk

Cf. dog -- it covers dog & frog, mentioning pig, stag & earwig. 89.64.25.123 03:07, 11 December 2019 (UTC)

Obsolete slang: an informer
Of course we have the modern police sense. But John Camden Hotten's Slang Dictionary (1873) has: "Pig, a policeman; an informer. The word is now almost exclusively applied by London thieves to a plain-clothes man, or a 'nose.'" Equinox ◑ 04:15, 1 October 2021 (UTC)