A cooked pig’s foot is called a pettitoe, a word English acquired from French more than four hundred years ago. Originally, however, the term pettitoe referred not to the foot of a pig but to the innards of a goose, a peculiar shift in meaning that occurred partly because the English people misapprehended a French word. The original form of pettitoe was the French petite oye, meaning little goose; this name was given by the French to the little parts of a goose—such as the heart, liver, and gizzard—that are removed before it is cooked. When the English adopted this French term in the mid sixteenth century they misspelt it as pettitoe, which obscured the word’s original application to geese; accordingly, the English soon began using the word to refer to the innards of any animal, not just those of a goose. Later on, the meaning of the word shifted further, once again thanks to the English spelling of the word: pettitoe happens to end with toe, so people gradually began to associate the word not with the innards of an animal but with its feet. A final development occurred when pettitoe came to refer not just to any animal but to pigs in particular; this last shift in meaning may have occurred partly because pig and pettitoe both begin with p—a coincidence that helps to link the words—and partly because pigs, unlike cows or goats, actually do have toes (four on each foot, each ending in a little hoof).