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bovine

UK/ˈbəʊ.vaɪn/US/ˈboʊˌvaɪn/
adjectiveC1Occasional — familiar, but not everyday · #10,986 of 15,258leans written

Bovine means to do with cattle, or slow and placid. Bovine tuberculosis, a bovine expression, bovine calm.

The technical sense is neutral and appears in veterinary and farming language. Applied to a person it is an insult about looking dull and unhurried, which is unfair to cattle. Beef comes from the same Latin word by a French road.

Benh LIEU SONG from Torcy, France · CC BY-SA 2.0

Definitions of bovine

  1. 1adjectivebovineTo do with cattle, or slow and placid.C1

    “The vet specialises in bovine health and spends most days on dairy farms.”

bovine is a quality.

Where it comes from

Latin bovinus comes from bos, an ox or cow. Beef and bovine are the same root.

  1. Proto-Indo-European

    *gʷṓws

  2. Latin

    bovīnus — relating to cattle

  3. English, today

    bovine

Borrowed from Latin bovīnus (“relating to cattle”), from Latin bōs (“ox”). Cognate to beef.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in A Song of Ice and Fire

Practise this word

bovine in the wild

  • In many countries, bovine milk and meat is used as food by humans.

    Bovinae

  • Small breeds of domestic bovine, such as the Miniature Zebu, are kept as pets.

    Bovinae

  • Currently, there is no accepted medical use of bovine colostrum to treat any condition in humans.

    Colostrum

  • BoHV-1 is also a contributing factor in shipping fever, also known as bovine respiratory disease (BRD).

    Bovine herpesvirus 1

  • The causative agent, bovine viral diarrhea virus (BVDV), is a member of the genus Orthopestivirus of the family Pestiviridae.

    Bovine viral diarrhea

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.