[…] the worst insult to a woman, either in London or Paris, is "cow"; a name which might even be a compliment, for cows are among the most likeable of animals.
Greville Preston: You've been set up, you silly cow. Now, don't let me hear any more about this unless you have absolute stand-up-in-court proof it's kosher... Mattie Storin:Pig.
2014 December 5, Marina Hyde, “Childbirth is as awful as it is magical, thanks to our postnatal ‘care’”, in The Guardian:
By the time of my third, five months ago, I was a right bossy cow about what I wanted because I knew the drill. For reasons I shan’t bore you with, I got them to induce me at 39 weeks, at 10am, with the epidural going in first, and it was all a dream.
An assistant manager, wearing the stripes of a cadet corporal, walked up to Coach Smith. Clint knew him, a Cow from B-l. What had he done to become so outstanding that the Tacs made him a corporal?
2023, James E Parco, David A Levy, Daphne DePorres, Attitudes Aren't Free: A Call to Action, page 242:
When I was a cow (junior) at West Point, I dated a plebe (freshman), which is considered fraternization in the cadet realm.
The plural cows is the normal plural for multiple individuals, while cattle is used in a more collective sense. The umlaut plurals kee, kie, kine, ky and kye are archaic or dialectal, and are not in common use.
Emily looked across at the girl. Large, steady, purplish-grey eyes gazed into beady, twinkling, black ones—gazed unquailingly—with something in them that cowed and compelled. The black eyes wavered and fell, their owner covering her retreat with another giggle and toss of her short braid of hair.
Who could live to gaze from day to day on bricks and slates, who had once felt the influence of a scene like this? Who could continue to exist, where there are no cows but the cows on the chimneypots; nothing redolent of Pan but pan-tiles;[…]
Etymology 4
Clipping of AT2018cow. From the name of the archetypal event, AT2018cow, an LFBOT. From being an astronomical transient (AT) occurring in 2018, with an automatically assigned code to distinguish it from other events in 2018.
Stairs Kreger, Glenn Albert, Scharfe de Stairs, Emily Florence, Olvaries Oviedo, Proceso, Ponce Villanueva, Tereso, Comonfort Llave, Lorenzo (1981) Diccionario huave de San Mateo del Mar (Serie de vocabularios indígenas “Mariano Silva y Aceves”;24) (in Spanish), México, D.F.:Instituto Lingüístico de Verano, pages 88, 252