Once again the NY Times has increased my vocabulary. A story about a small New Mexico town describes its current state of decay: “And these days, more animals than people can be found wandering the streets. Quail, javelinas and the occasional mountain lion strut through empty cul-de-sacs…” Quail and mountain lions I know, but javelinas were new to me. It turns out javelina (pronounced hah-v@-LEE-n@) is a synonym for collared peccary and has an interesting etymology:
Alteration of Spanish jabalina, feminine of jabalí, jabalín, wild boar, from Arabic (hinzir) jabal, mountain (swine), from jabal, mountain; see gbl in Semitic roots.
In case you’re interested, peccary is (in the words of Webster’s Third New International) “of Cariban origin; akin to Chayma paquera, Apalai pakira.”
Do not be deceived, incidentally, by the popular etymology given at pages like this: “They are called Javelina because of their razor-sharp tusks, Spanish for javelin or spear.” Remember, buy your etymologies only from authorized vendors! Use of amateur etymologies can invalidate your warranty and may cause public embarrassment.
This is only tangentially related, but Major League Baseball runs a developmental league called the Arizona Fall League. One team in that league is the Peoria Javelinas.
Here is their hat:
http://www.minorleagues.com/681004.html
Hey, that’s bang on topic as far as I’m concerned! I may have to order one of those hats.
My supervisor read The Three Little Javelinas last year to the kids at our school. I’ve never heard of the term before, so when I first saw the title the first thing that came to mind were three javelins who were short and couldn’t make it to a track meet. Silly, I know.
My supervisor read The Three Little Javelinas last year to the kids at our school. I’ve never heard of the term before, so when I first saw the title the first thing that came to mind were three javelins who were short and couldn’t make it to a track meet. Silly, I know.
Does that mean we can start muttering “Mountain swine!” under our breath when we feel like being impolite?
I knew what javelinas were from Old Yeller, a book I read when I was a kid.
There’s a Javelina cameo in The Royal Tenenbaums — a mounted head on the wall in one of the stairways in the family house.