biestings


Also found in: Medical.

biestings

(ˈbiːstɪŋz)
n
(Agriculture) a variant spelling of beestings

beest•ings

or beast•ings

(ˈbi stɪŋz)

n. (used with a sing. v.)
colostrum, esp. of a cow.
[before 1000; late Middle English bestynge, Old English bȳsting=bēost beestings (c. Old Saxon, Old High German biost) + -ing -ing 1]
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References in periodicals archive ?
Even a marvelously archaic word like "beestings" or "biestings," denoting the colostrum or first milk of a newly-calved cow, is transformed by intentional malapropism into the absurd yet evocative "beastlings." What Muldoon had called "the use and abuse of the English language in Ireland" becomes a lesson to us all in the multiple-leveled workings of language and image creation.
Fluid disjunction in Paul Muldoon's "Immram" and "The More a Man Has the More a Man Wants."

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