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Animal epithet


An animal epithet is a name used to label a person or group, by association with some perceived quality of an animal. Epithets may be formulated as similes, explicitly comparing people with the named animal, or as metaphors, directly naming people as animals. Animal epithets may be pejorative, readily giving offence, but they are also used in political campaigns. One English epithet, lamb, is always used positively.

Animal similes and metaphors have been used since classical times, for example by Homer and Virgil, to heighten effects in literature, and to sum up complex concepts concisely.

Surnames that name animals are found in different countries. They may be metonymic, naming a person's profession, generally in the Middle Ages; toponymic, naming the place where a person lived; or nicknames, comparing the person favourably or otherwise with the named animal.

In the cultures of ancient Greece and ancient Rome, animal stereotypes grew until by the time of Virgil, animal epithets could be applied to anything from an abstract concept like love or fear, to a whole civilisation. An author could use an animal's name to emphasise a theme or to provide an overview of a complex epic tale. For example, Homer uses animal similes in the Iliad and the Odyssey, where the lion symbolises qualities such as bravery, leading up to the lion simile at the end of the Odyssey, where in Book 22 Odysseus kills all Penelope's suitors. In the Iliad, Homer compares the Trojans to stridulating grasshoppers, implying, suggests the classicist Gordon Lindsay Campbell, that they make a lot of noise but are weaker and less determined than they think. In the Aeneid, Book 4, Virgil compares the world of Dido, queen of Carthage, with a colony of ants. Dido's people are, argues Campbell, hardworking, strong, unfailingly loyal, organised, and self-regulating: just the sort of world that the hero Aeneas would like to create. But, Campbell suggests, the simile also suggests that Carthage's civilisation is fragile and insignificant, and could readily be destroyed.


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