Before they were known as butchers, people who sold cuts of meat were called flesh-mongers, a term first recorded in the eleventh century. The monger part of this word, still current in terms such as fish-monger or war-monger, derives from the Latin mango, which is what the ancient Romans called someone who traded goods for a living (this mango is not related to the fruit of the same name). Butchers ceased to call themselves flesh-mongers in the late sixteenth century when the term came to mean pimp, a person who deals in human flesh. For a briefer time, from the early fourteenth to the mid fifteenth century, butchers were also sometimes called flesh-hewers, a term so graphic that it’s hardly surprising it quickly became obsolete.<\/p>\n
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Before they were known as butchers, people who sold cuts of meat were called flesh-mongers, a term first recorded in the eleventh century. The monger part of this word, still current in terms such as fish-monger or war-monger, derives from the Latin mango, which is what the ancient Romans called someone who traded goods for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-40268","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-f"],"yoast_head":"\n