July 4, 2008: Friday Awwww

[DanaC]

I'm curious. What IS the proper word for meat that we get from a rabbit? Deer is to venison what rabbit is to ????

Rabbit is just rabbit.

The reason deer meat is 'venison', cow meat is 'beef' and pig meat is 'pork' is that those were meats eaten by the higher echelons of society in the early middle ages. The higher echelons of society in early medieval England were Norman (i.e French) and they imported their words for those meats into our language. The meats eaten by the lower orders (the native english) retained their original English names. i.e chicken and rabbit.

Turkey was introduced later and was not of the anglo-french period.