Abstract: The cultural and linguistic heritage of the Ox

In modern Standard Swedish, the words oxe ‘ox’, tjur ‘bull’ and stut ‘steer’ designatethe male bovine (Bos Taurus). It is easy to believe that these words have been commonlyused in the Swedish language, but this is not the case. In fact the words tjur andstut have only been used in the south of Sweden. Indeed until the beginning of the20th century these terms were proper dialect words. This is due to the fact that thebovine male only has been commonly used as draught animal in the south of Sweden.In the north of Sweden oxe designate a non-castrated male bovine, i.e. a bull, whilstin the south oxe signifies a castrated male, i.e. an ox. Alongside oxe, the words tjur andstut have been used to distinguish the different types of male bovine. In addition theSwedish dialect word böl designates a castrated adult male bovine used as a draughtanimal, but one which previously was a bull. This article presents a sample of Swedishdialect words for the male bovine. Moreover, different types of commands havebeen used to drive the ox forward in the south of Sweden, where each region has itsown tradition of specific commands. This article presents a few of these commands.