Gramer Girl here. I'm Minion Foculty and you can think of me as your friendly guide to

the English language. We talk about writing, history, rules, and cool stuff. And today

we'll talk about verbs that come from animal behaviors and about when to use people,

persons, and peoples. One of our listeners wrote in with a question about what she called

animal verbs, verbs that take their name from an animal's characteristic behavior. She

wondered if there were a proper name for such verbs. Well, Catherine, there is a special

name for animal sounds, at least ones that imitate the noises that animals make. They're

called anomotopeia. For example, quack, woof, and chirp are anomotopeias. These words

mimic the sounds that ducks, dogs, and birds make, respectively. But as far as we can find,

there's no special name for words based on the behavior of animals. We're going to

talk about some of them today anyway, though, just for fun. Some such words are pretty

obvious in their meaning. The verb to ram is based on the tendency of a male sheep, also

known as a ram, to crash into one another, horns first when they're competing for a mate.

The verb to hog refers to pigs jostling one another for room in a feeding trough. And

monkey-ing around refers to the sometimes mischievous behavior of spider monkeys. But some

animal verbs have a more subtle meaning. For example, to bird dog means to conduct a

determined search for something or to pester someone relentlessly. It's based on the

behavior of hunting dogs like Labrador's and Spaniols. These dogs are used to find birds,

flush them out of the underbrush, and then retrieve them once they've been downed.

And a related vein to dog or to howl into someone means to follow someone or harass

them persistently. This one is based on the behavior of hound dogs like Beagle's, Bassets

and Bloodhounds. These dogs use their acute sense of smell to chase prey or escape convicts

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