colostrum (n.): milk secreted for a few days after parturition and characterized by high protein and antibody content

This word came up in a roundabout way following a discussion with confirmed bestie and fellow Hold the Waffle-er Liz about epilepsy or something. I mentioned that one extreme treatment for the prevention of seizures is to sever the corpus callosum, the network of fibers that joins the two halves of the brain. I referred to this procedure, in jest, as a “corpus colostomy.” Ha ha.

Then, of course, I had to figure out what the surgery was actually called. Well, son of a fucking bitch, it’s a corpus callosotomy. Who knew? This led me to wonder about the derivation of the suffix “-tomy,” which seemed peculiar for some reason. When I looked for “callosotomy” on Merriam-Webster, though, I came up empty — I guess it’s too specialized for inclusion, or else my growing suspicions about M-W being a craptastic reference work are true. One of the items that did come up, though, was “colostrum,” which I checked out. This pretty much brings us to the present.

Have you left yet? Super. Colostrum, the substance, is kind of weird, but “colostrum,” the word, is even weirder. I think it’s cool that the substance exists, and I agree wholeheartedly with those OB-GYNs who decided it needed a name, but why colostrum? The etymology in M-W reads as follows:

Etymology: Latin, beestings

That’s it. You think I’m kidding? See for yourself.

So what’s wrong with this picture?

1. “Colostrum” is clearly singular, and “beestings” is clearly plural.
2. “Colostrum” doesn’t look like it should have anything to do with bees or stinging.
3. What in the holy hell would “beestings” have to do with the substance secreted for a few days after birth anyway?

Well, so it turns out that points 1 and 2 are resolved simply because “beestings” is, in fact, an English word meaning “colostrum.” It’s plural but can be singular in construction, and it dates from long before fancy-pants scientist types decided that every little thing that took place in a hospital or a gland had to have a Latin name. (For what it’s worth, Pliny the Elder uses “colostrum” to mean colostrum in his Natural History, 28.33 §123, but English women were making it too, long before anyone had ever heard of either Pliny.)

3 is more difficult. The etymology of “beestings” and its variant form “beastings” only confuse matters. M-W includes Middle English bestynge, Old English bysting, from bEost (all meaning beestings) and mentions that it’s “akin to Old High German biost” meaning beestings. The alternate spelling begs the question: is this name related to the stings of bees, or to an obsolete verb form of “beast”? The pronunciation guide is no help — it’s ambiguously written “/'bE-sti[ng]z/” and their sound file offers no clue as to whether it should be parsed “bee-stings” or “beast-ings.” Unfortunately, I’ve run out of resources, time, and patience, so if anyone has any further information, do please share.

[Edit: A little more effort yields the following entry from the 1913 Webster's Unabridged:

Biestings, Beestings
Biest"ings, Beest"ings (?), n. pl. [OE. bestynge, AS. bsting, fr. bst, beost; akin to D. biest, OHG. biost, G. biest; of unknown origin.] The first milk given by a cow after calving. B. Jonson.

“The thick and curdy milk . . . commonly called biestings.” Newton. (1574).

Furthermore, yourDictionary.com definitively breaks the word down “beest·ings also beast·ings.”

However! The word “beast” comes not from Old High German or Old English but rather from Anglo-French “beste” and Latin “bestia.” So I think the conclusion to be drawn here is that “beestings” has nothing to do with bee stings, but also bears no relation to the word “beast” as a verb or otherwise. It’s just some wacky Old English that has managed, primarily in cattle-raising circles, to survive to the present day.]