rês

Meaning

neat (food animal)

Pronounced as (IPA)

/ˈʁe(j)s/

Etymology

Cognate with Spanish res. Origin contested. From either Latin rēs (“thing, property”) or Arabic رَأْس (raʔs, “head”, also of cattle). While the latter is a perfect semantic match, the front vowel of the Romance form speaks against Arabic origin because dialects generally maintain a back -a- in this word (compare Maltese ras, not *ries).