Yet another surprising etymology graphic:
“Cow” and “beef” are related words.
After the Norman invasion of England in 1066, the country came under the rule of a Norman French speaking nobility.
This lead to a situation where the live animals were handled by Middle English speakers, while the cooked animal was eaten by theirNormal French speaking lords.
The result: many animals have French-origin words for their meats.
Cow –> beef
Pig –> pork
Deer –> venison,
Sheep –> mutton
Chicken and fish are notable exception, perhaps because even the poorest English speaking peasants could still raise and eat chickens, or catch and eat fish.
Unlike the other examples, cow+beef form a pair of linguistic doublets, as they are distantly related words.
If Proto-Italic *gʷōs becoming Latin bōs looks weird to you, you are right! It is something of an anomaly, as normally P. Italic *gʷ became “v” in Latin.
The most likely explanation is that the word was influenced by or borrowed from the word for cow in a closely related Italic language like Umbrian, in which cows were 𐌁𐌖𐌌 (“bum”). Umbrian “bum” is also from Proto-Italic *gʷōs.
So in this image I have shown a simplified version of what was actually a pretty complex and poorly understood shift.