But there would always be something to fix - like the monkeys' pigheaded insistence that all their children ride in car seats…
Here you can see that word 'pigheaded' has been used to qualify the monkeys' obstinacy of making its' brood ride in car seats. Pigheadedness means unyielding or stubborn. Now don't go googling pig head. Chances are you'll be tormented with recipes of 'how to cook a pig's head'. One man's vocabulary is another man's ingredient. Don't even start to think that I'm being funny. The fact remains that pig head and pig-head are two very differently used words. While the former qualifies as an ingredient or very plainly an important part of the pig's anatomy, the latter is purely an adjective that defines an adamant, unrelenting, dogged, willful, stubborn behaviour.
I decided to trace the etymology of the word and was pleasantly surprised to know that it did not have the remotest of relation to the animal. Except for one story, that revolved around a Thai myth there wasn't much that i got to read about drawing a strong relation between the two. As a person who takes a keen interest in myths and mythological stories, this particular one did not invoke any feeling in me. It was more like a forced attempt to connect things.
Does that mean that I leave the word and the pig alone? NO, not so soon. I can be very pigheaded about a lot of things, and the etymology of this word happens to be one of them.
So here is another explanation.
Apparently, this word has been in usage since the 17th century. Yes, you read it right. Perhaps blacksmith colloquialism.
Long long ago there was a head and the head belonged to a pig, just that the pig was not all blood and flesh but a raw ingot of iron. Hard to believe, right? But this is a convincing explanation. So pigheaded meant iron headed as the ingot form of raw iron was called 'pig iron'.
If you wish to know more about the pighead you can visit this page. It has some helpful guesses, good ones too.
http://www.newton.dep.anl.gov/askasci/chem03/chem03354.htm
Here you can see that word 'pigheaded' has been used to qualify the monkeys' obstinacy of making its' brood ride in car seats. Pigheadedness means unyielding or stubborn. Now don't go googling pig head. Chances are you'll be tormented with recipes of 'how to cook a pig's head'. One man's vocabulary is another man's ingredient. Don't even start to think that I'm being funny. The fact remains that pig head and pig-head are two very differently used words. While the former qualifies as an ingredient or very plainly an important part of the pig's anatomy, the latter is purely an adjective that defines an adamant, unrelenting, dogged, willful, stubborn behaviour.
I decided to trace the etymology of the word and was pleasantly surprised to know that it did not have the remotest of relation to the animal. Except for one story, that revolved around a Thai myth there wasn't much that i got to read about drawing a strong relation between the two. As a person who takes a keen interest in myths and mythological stories, this particular one did not invoke any feeling in me. It was more like a forced attempt to connect things.
Does that mean that I leave the word and the pig alone? NO, not so soon. I can be very pigheaded about a lot of things, and the etymology of this word happens to be one of them.
So here is another explanation.
Apparently, this word has been in usage since the 17th century. Yes, you read it right. Perhaps blacksmith colloquialism.
Long long ago there was a head and the head belonged to a pig, just that the pig was not all blood and flesh but a raw ingot of iron. Hard to believe, right? But this is a convincing explanation. So pigheaded meant iron headed as the ingot form of raw iron was called 'pig iron'.
If you wish to know more about the pighead you can visit this page. It has some helpful guesses, good ones too.
http://www.newton.dep.anl.gov/askasci/chem03/chem03354.htm
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