I keep learning new words from Quina. They are mostly useless, obscure words, but I was interested that there’s a feminine form of Touro because I always thought Touro was the masculine form of Vaca. Maybe that’s a hangover from English though, where the feminine is the default because you learn cow first, as a child, and only later find out that there’s a daddy cow called a bull, who is always in a bad mood, and that people in other countries like to wave red capes at him for reasons that are difficult to fathom.
Anyway Toura (or “toira”, because it’s one of those words that can be spelled with an ou or an oi) refers to a young or sterile cow. It can also be an irascible woman (informally – and I’ve no idea how someone would react if you called them that so would not recommend) or a handled cooking pot (tacho) but only in some regions.
So if there’s a feminine form of Touro, is there a masculine form of Vaca? No, no there is not, not even in 2024, but as soon as the Americans find out about this they’ll have an entire academic department writing papers about it, I’ve no doubt.
Luso 