![]() There’s “mongrel,” associated with miscegenation, and “mixed-breed,” a more neutral but still breeding-linked term. There’s “cur,” which according to the OED once had a neutral meaning, describing a sheepdog, but grew nastier over time “tyke,” from an Old Norse word meaning “female dog” and “mutt,” from “mutton-head,” or idiot. Going back hundreds of years, most names for nonpurebreds are put-downs, often referencing the dog’s mixed parentage-the way “mulatto” and “quadroon” once did for mixed-race people. “Lurchers” were the greyhound-like dogs poachers used to steal game, their name deriving from an archaic term for “thief.” A “retriever” was bred to be good at fetching downed game birds. And until the show craze of the mid-19th century, dogs were usually bred in service of their function, not for looks. The original names for dog breeds in English derived mostly from place names (Labrador, Weimaraner, Pomeranian) or from the dogs’ function. Now that we’re embracing these dogs, we may need some new ways to describe them. In fact, for centuries, our terms for dogs have been all about asserting that our highly valued animals are not mutts. ![]() There’s no “domestic short-hair,” the neutral catchall term for “whatever it is” cats, in the canine kingdom. At Westminster and AKC events, mutts compete under the grand-sounding but potentially misleading category “All-American.” (What about one from Canada? And does that make other dogs less completely American?) Other terms for mutt-“mixed-breed, “cross-breed,” “mongrel”-have a pejorative edge, emphasizing their mixed-up bloodlines. But there’s just one problem: what to call the se dogs. ![]()
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