@Portable Hermit It makes sense but sounds kinda yucky. But that's a bit of a sleight of hand as "oil" is really more like "fat/oil/grease", lipids.

But cow grease or cow fat doesn't sound very appetizing either. Connotations are a weird thing.

As it turns out, the etymology of butter is something like that too:

https://social.gl-como.it/display/3e3ce0df-5064-ec3e-456d-9ca463508949

I'm assuming that the "cheese" in "cow cheese" (https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/βούτυρον ) is something less specific than the modern English word "cheese", so that it includes butter and other grease.

Elena ``of Valhalla''

2023-08-28 06:27:17

@clacke: looking for something 🇸🇪🇭🇰💙💛 I'm deeply disappointed (and will remain so for a whole 15 minutes or so) that the english dictionary doesn't have an etymology section on any of the Mandarin words for butter other than the English borrowing.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E9%BB%83%E6%B2%B9#Mandarin
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E7%89%9B%E6%B2%B9#Mandarin
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E7%99%BD%E8%84%AB#Mandarin

OTOH, cow cheese??? wtf were the ancient greeks thinking?

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%CE%B2%CE%BF%CF%8D%CF%84%CF%85%CF%81%CE%BF%CE%BD#Ancient_Greek

黃油 - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

^{en.wiktionary.org}