Words: omasum, n.

William Hartston
Thursday 20 August 1998 18:02 EDT
Comments

Your support helps us to tell the story

From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.

At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.

The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.

Your support makes all the difference.

RUMINANTS' STOMACHS cause me a great deal of linguistic anxiety. If you look up omasum in Chambers Dictionary, you will find it means "a ruminant's third stomach, the psalterium or manyplies". Look up psalterium and you will find it is the omasum or manyplies, while the entry for manyplies tells us it or they (for the word is sing. or pl.) is or are the omasum or psalterium.

So far, so good, but what about the fardel-bag? A fardel is "anything cumbersome or irksome; the third stomach of a ruminant, the manyplies or omasum". No mention of the psalterium though. And a fardel-bag is defined only as "the omasum".

Having so many words for the third stomach of a ruminant is all rather cumbersome and irksome. Quite a fardel, in fact.

Join our commenting forum

Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies

Comments

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged inPlease refresh your browser to be logged in