Why are live sheep “sheep” and cooked sheep “mutton”?
Lederer, The Miracle of Language, page xv: “In 1066 the Norman French invaded England and within a year ruled all of the country. The Norman Conquest signaled the end of the Old English period and the beginning of Middle English, but the French that the Norman nobility spoke did not reach down to the lower classes, the folk who, in the long run, were to determine the nature of our language. This separation explains why live animals, which were tended by the Saxon peasants, had English names — sheep, cow, ox, swine, calf, deer, and chicken — while the animals that were ‘carried to the castle hall to feast among the nobles,’ as Walter Scott writes in Ivanhoe, had Ferench names — mutton, beef, pork, bacon, veal, venison, and pullet [respectively].
