A Moose for a Lawyer:
From today's Seventh Circuit opinion by Judge Easterbrook in Nunez v. U.S. (thanks to How Appealing for the pointer):
A lawyer who does not show up for trial might as well be a moose, and giving the defendant a moose does not satisfy the sixth amendment.
Is this the birth of a new professional pejorative? "He's such a moose." "She's a total moose."
On the other hand, later on the opinion suggests it disapproves of "a rule that a lawyer is the client's puppet." Especially not, I hope, a moose puppet.
That whole circuit (refers to Posner) is about attention grabbing for the casebooks.
Also, why isn't it "meese" in the plural. I still think it should be...
"Watch me pull an acquittal out of my hat!"
*various feline noises*
"Huh. Never knew an acquittal looked like a civet!"
Why "moose," because they are very big and stupid? When one is driving in northern Maine, they encounter very frequent road signs warning them to look out for moose. It is not a joke, since hitting a moose with your car is much more dangerous than hitting a deer, and it is not unheard of for drivers to be killed when they hit these gentle creatures which stand so high on long legs and weigh so much.
Are some moose gay? Otherwise, a male moose lawyer might not want any bucks at all.
But I'm sure it'll cost you a lot of doe . . .
No.
Somewhere Clayton Cramer is peeved that you beat him to an irrelevant reference to homosexuality.
And we like moose in our household. If you insist on using a cervine as a perjorative, may I suggest the shiftless caribou?
Are some moose gay? Otherwise, a male moose lawyer might not want any bucks at all.
But I'm sure it'll cost you a lot of doe . . ."
You win... it's all downhill from that.
I doubt that this is right. "moose" is from Eastern Abenaki. I don't have reference materials for this language to hand, but in general Algonquian languages do have distinct plural forms for "moose". In Plains Cree, for example, the singular is moswa and the plural is moswak.
I suspect that the borrowed "moose" was assimilated to the zero-plural pattern of other English words for wild animals. Compare "deer", plural "deer", "elk", plural "elk", "cariboo", plural "cariboo", etc.
Yes but he was a Moose with a college education!
Oh wait, that's a moose with a lawyer.
Norwegian/Danish: elg
Russian/Slovak/Slovenian/Czech/Polish: los
Spanish/Italian/Portuguese: alce
German: der Elch
I guess it's because they don't have them in those parts, but still, I mean, it's SOOO not an elk.
I think you have the priority of the names reversed.
Northern Europe does have native moose (Alces alces), and Elk/Elg/Elch, etc. is the original name for those animals. It's only in North America that the word "Elk" has been applied to another deer species, Cervus canadensis and a native American name applied to Alces alces. In Europe, a similar Cervus species is the Red Deer, Cervus elephus, and other Cervus species throughout the world seem to be commonly referred to as "deer," not "elk."
I don't know why the European settlers in N. America took an existing name for Alces alces and applied to another deer. Ideally, Cervus canadensis should probably be called "Wapiti" to avoid confusion with Moose/Elk.
The moose better hope the judge isn't a short thickly-accented guy named Boris.
Your link should have gone to THE moose puppet of all time: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mr._Moose
Are some moose gay? Otherwise, a male moose lawyer might not want any bucks at all.
But I'm sure it'll cost you a lot of doe . . ."
It's "bull" and "cow" for moose.
But the opinion leaves me wondering: are we assuming the moose, unlike the lawyer, shows up for trial?
The Fifth Circuit "precedent" says no such thing. See Burdine v. Johnson, 262 F.3d 336 (5th Cir. 2001) (en banc). The court has been the butt of far too many jokes to let your assertion stand. And to get the flavor of what kind of case was presented, you might want to check out Judge Jolly's short, but effective, dissent. See id. at 357.