cowpiss

English

Etymology

Inherited from Middle English cowpisse; equivalent to cow +‎ piss.

Noun

cowpiss (uncountable)

1. (vulgar) Cow urine.

   Synonyms: (vulgar) cow urine, (India) gomutra

   • 1964, William Humphrey, “Sam Ordway’s Revenge”, in The Ordways, New York, N.Y.: Alfred A. Knopf, published 1965, →LCCN, page 249:

     Cows were mainly good for kicking over the milk pail, swatting you in the face with a cowpiss-soaked tail.

   • 1982, Stan Davies, “Shed a Tear for Brendan”, in E. H. Mikhail, editor, Brendan Behan: Interviews and Recollections, volume 2, →ISBN, page 294:

     ‘⸺ing Gebler,’ he moaned in a strangled voice, ‘what was in that bottle?’ ‘Cowpiss’, said my uncle. ‘You should have asked me but you didn’t. I would have told you what it was. We took it from a sick cow to give to the veterinarian for urinalysis.’ Brendan, gasping ‘cowpiss’, ran outraged at full speed the few hundred yards outside and down the side of the mountain to throw himself in the freezing waters of Loch Dan.

   • 1982, John Olive, Clara’s Play, Samuel French, Inc., published 1984, page 38:

     Smell like every barn in the world. Hay, mud, cowpiss.

   • 1983 July 30, Alex Hamilton, “The stamp of individuality”, in The Guardian, page 6:

     And when the hopeful women came near, the farmers raised up crop-sprayers, and covered them in cowpiss.

   • 1985, Daniël Daen, “The Prodigal Son”, in Rod Jellema, transl., Country Fair: Poems from Friesland since 1945, Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company; Kampen: Catalogus Uitgeversmaatschappij J. H. Kok, →ISBN, page 173:

     cows rub shoulders against their stalls / chains rattling the night / there’s wheezing everywhere, the swish of tails / the devil, riding cowpiss manure, keeps watch

   • 1986, Frederick Busch, Sometimes I Live in the Country, Boston, Mass.: David R. Godine, →ISBN, page 5:

     Petey was pretty sure it was mostly straw with a little grass plus maybe oregano and cowpiss mixed in or something.

   • 1986 October 10, “Naked Texan Meets Benito Mussolini”, in Catalyst, volume 20, number 4, Colorado Springs, Colo., page 18:

     Grab yourself a cold Lone Star longneck. Pop the top, take a swig, swish it around your mouth, savor the unique flavor. You’re enjoying the National Beer of Texas. Tastes like cowpiss cause it is cowpiss.

   • 1988, Boman Desai, “Froglegs”, in The Memory of Elephants, Chicago, Ill., London: The University of Chicago Press, published 2001, →ISBN, page 178:

     Rusi, nodding, was eating the froglegs happily enough — but he, of course, had drunk cowpiss just as willingly during our navjote.

   • 1990, Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London, page 153:

     […] the virtues of drinking ‘cowpiss’ as an expurgative […]

   • 1990, Vance Bourjaily, Old Soldier, New York, N.Y.: Donald I. Fine, Inc., →ISBN, page 148:

     “Hang onto the boat,” Joe called back, and ran up the steep, stony path to where he’d parked, and there it was, clean as cowpiss, his red Chevy pickup hunkered down on four flats, with the valve stems lying around on the ground where someone’d dropped them.

   • 1992 July, Bridget McKenna, “A Little Night Music”, in Amazing Stories, volume LXVII, number 4 (whole 572), page 36:

     He picked up Vince’s abandoned Guinness and took a swig. “Jesus, that’s real cowpiss, isn’t it? […]”

   • 1997, Roger Boylan, Killoyle, Dalkey Archive Press, published 1998, →ISBN, page 66:

     “Esoteric? Don’t be talking, man. It’s plain as cowpiss. Half the world’s problems would go away if we all accepted God and, having accepted Him, admitted that we’d been looking for Him all along.”

   • 2000, John McManus, “June 1989”, in Stop Breakin Down, New York, N.Y.: Picador USA, →ISBN, page 85:

     They flipped through a Penthouse that Brandon had been carrying in his backpack as the mosquitoes buzzed around the muddy herd of cattle. Bugs skimmed across the murky water. They watched the sun set over the distant treeline in shining streaks of orange as cowpiss splashes sounded from behind them, and in the calming air of the dusk they relaxed silently as their sweat evaporated into the fading light.

   • 2001, Seamus Heaney, “Late in the Day”, in Electric Light, New York, N.Y.: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, →ISBN, page 85:

     Shadow-flit, / Ink-gleam and quill-shine, late now in the day / I need their likes, freshets and rivulets / Starting from nowhere, capillaries of joy / Frittered and flittering like the scimitar / Of cowpiss in the wind that David Thomson / Flashed on my inner eye from the murky byre / Where he imagined himself a cow let out in spring / Smelling green weed, up to his hips in grass.

   • 2003, Stuart Sheppard, Spindrift, Berkeley, Calif.: Creative Arts Book Company, →ISBN, →LCCN, page 204:

     “Hey—how about a snort of something good. Take a break from that cowpiss.” He brought a bottle of dark liquor from the cabin.

   • 2010, Roger Alan Skipper, Bone Dogs, Berkeley, Calif.: Counterpoint, →ISBN, page 48:

     The water had been warm as cowpiss in the shallows but as the line squished forward the chill made me want to either get in or get out.

   • 2014, George Szanto, Whatever Lola Wants, Brindle & Glass, →ISBN, page 221:

     But we signed that cowpiss agreement and now the bastard’s suing me.

   • 2018, The Collected Poems of Bertolt Brecht, translation of original by Bertolt Brecht:

     He himself felt rough / (Because this lady had a cowpiss scent)

Adjective

cowpiss (not comparable)

1. (vulgar) Of the color of cow urine.
   • 1934 February 22, Clement Greenberg, edited by Janice Van Horne, The Harold Letters, 1928-1943: The Making of an American Intellectual, published 2003, →ISBN, page 119:

     It’s that I spent last night with Toady, and going home at 7:30 in the gray cowpiss California morning—all passion spent and reeling with unrealized bliss—and going straight to work, I was this morning—when I got your letter—as encased in formaldehyde, and all the liquor had I gotten drunk on coagulated and made a thick slime to coat my insides.

   • 2002, William Carpenter, The Wooden Nickel, Little, Brown and Company, →ISBN, pages 211–212:

     Doris has set the tables with flowers and candles and black-and-white checked tablecloths and every one of them has four Philadelphians with bibs on like big sunburnt children, grinning at each other over dead red lobsters and cowpiss yellow wine.

   cowpiss: