cattlehead

English

Etymology

From cattle +‎ head. Interestingly, both are doublets from Proto-Indo-European *kauput- (“head”), through Latin caput (“head”) and from Old English hēafd-, hēafod (“head; top; source; chief”), itself from Proto-Germanic *haubudą (“head”), respectively.

Noun

cattlehead (plural cattlehead or cattleheads)

1. (India) head of cattle; a neat, a beef, a single bovine
   • 1963, Mother India, volume 29, page 14, column 2:

     Even assuming that our 50-million Muslims eat up 50-million cattle-heads a year at the rate of one cattlehead per human head per year, we shall still have millions and millions of cattle living and multiplying with our food inside them.

   • 1984, Bangladesh Academy for Rural Development, Effects of Flood (1984) in Bangladesh: Survey of Nine Villages in Comilla, page 16:

     The reasons for death were more or less similar to cattleheads. In the case of poultry, in all, 1312 died mainly due to Ranikhet. These deaths of livestock comprised 5, 9.6 and 19.5 percent respectively of the present stock of cattleheads, goat and poultry (Tables – 14 and 15).

   • 1988, Pakistan Year Book, page 427:

     The mobile veterinary unit had been providing health facilities to the ailing cattlehead in the whole of Thar.

   • 1992, Raana Haider, A. Atiq Rahman, Saleemul Huq, editors, Cyclone '91 Revisited: A Follow-up Study, Bangladesh Center for Advanced Studies, page 12:

     The Local Government Engineering Bureau (LGEB) has built 2 killas as shelter for cattlehead.

   • 1995, Bara Parang: The Tale of the Developmental Refugees of the Chittagong Hill Tracts, →ISBN, page 65:

     As a result, most farming families now cannot keep more than a pair of cattlehead each, the bare minimum for operating a plough to till the land.

   • 1995, Rahul Shukla, Killing Grounds: The Saga of Encounters in Wild, Siddhi Books, page 114:

     Whenever a cattlehead was killed by the tiger, the men sprayed these poisonous chemicals copiously on the carcass and even kept the semi-solid balls of this substance namely carbofuran, B.H.C. Gamma, Lindane, Lintaf and Hepta Chlore etc. inside the fleshy part of the animal.

   • 2006, Society for Promotion of Wastelands Development, Collection of Foundation Day & Lovraj Kumar Memorial Lectures, “Cattlewealth and Fish”, page 244:

     India is perhaps a rare country having one cattlehead per two persons.

   • 2006, SC Bhatt, Gopal K. Bhargava, editors, Land and People of Indian States and Union Territories: Madhya Pradesh (volume 15), India: Kalpaz Publications, →ISBN, page 470:

     30 and 31 July 1991: Area Affected: Betul, Dewas, Indore and Ujjain; Casualties: 22 persons killed; 150 cattleheads perished; Damages: One house collapsed; Chandora dam damaged and Sapana dam breached.