Linguistic observation of the day<P>
In <i>Bicentennial Man</I> the android gets the phrase "casting pearls before
swine" wrong by using swans instead of swine.  That got me thinking how
swine got to mean the plural of pig, and I decided it must actually be the
plural of "sow".  Which brought up the idea that maybe in older English
there was a pattern of pluralizing things that end in "ow" by replacing
them with "wine".  (I would even bet that it might be related to the practice
of pluralizing things that end in "x" by replacing with "xen".)  Anyway,
there don't seem to be many words like this; doing the usual alphabetical
search for possible consonants that might precede "ow" yields only "tow"
as a likely candidate.  But sure enough, we also have the word "twine".
The final confirmation comes from this entry for "tow" in the online
Merriam-Webster dictionary:<P>
<blockquote)
Function: noun<BR>
Etymology: Middle English, from Old English tow- spinning; akin to Old Norse tO tuft of wool for spinning, Old English tawian to prepare for use -- more at TAW
Date: 14th century<BR>
1 : short or broken fiber (as of flax, hemp, or synthetic material) that is used especially for yarn, twine, or stuffing<BR>
2 a : yarn or cloth made of tow b : a loose essentially untwisted strand of synthetic fibers <BR>
</blockquote>
It would seem to confirm this as an Old English practice.<P>
<HR>
Update 1/6/99:<P>
A coworker read this and brought up "cow" as a counterexample.  But it
turns out it's not - the Old-English plural is "kine".  But there may
be other counterexamples.  She also brought up "row", and my answer was
that perhaps the Rhine river valley was so named for the rows of grape
vines.  But I haven't seen any confirmation of that yet.  If "rhine" was
ever the plural of "row" it's not in the dictionary now.  OTOH if it was,
then maybe there would be evidence of a French connection...</P>
<HR>
Update 2/5/99:<P>
More about the history when I found <a href=http://everything2.com/?node_id=268010&lastnode_id=0>this entry</a> in everything:
<blockquote>
<B>Kine</B> (?), n. pl. &#91;For older <I>kyen</I>, formed like <I>oxen</I>, fr. AS. <I>c</I>, itself pl. of <I>c</I> cow. See Cow, and cf. Kee, Kie.&#93; <P>Cows.</P> "A herd of fifty or sixty <I>kine</I>."
</blockquote>
<HR>
Update 2/11/99:<P>
<a href=mailto:Hans.Franke@mch20.sbs.de>Hans Franke</a> writes the following
to me in an email:<blockquote>
Sow == Sau (Female pig)<BR>
Swine == Schwein (pig)<BR>
And Rhein is belived to be based on the same root as Rain which
means small lon patch of land / Border patch.
Just keep in mind that English is just a Germanic variation with
some French and Latin influence - as deeper you dig as closer
they are - and also keep in mind that unified spelling for each
of the variants is a way new invention...
</blockquote>
<HR>
I'm surprised so many people are reading this...