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Definition
belonging or related to the genus Bos (cattle, oxen, buffalo, etc.); or stupid and slow-moving like an ox- According to the U.N.'s Food and Agriculture Organization, the meat industry generates more worldwide greenhouse-gas emissions than the transportation industry because of the nitrous oxide in manure and the methane that results from bovine digestion.
- She showed a bovine apathy.
- Mad cow disease is the common term for a brain-wasting disease in cattle called bovine spongiform encephalopathy.
- Though he bore a bull's head upon his surcoat and horns upon his helm, Ser Forley could not have been less bovine.George R.R. Martin -- A Feast For Crows
- Carol tried to stare them down but in face of the impishness of the boys and the bovine gaping of the men, she was embarrassed.Sinclair Lewis -- Main Street
- Her voice soared over the clink of coffee cups and the soft bovine sounds of the ladies munching their dainties.Harper Lee -- To Kill a Mockingbird
- It is a kind of bovine temperament.Henry James -- The American
- Some faces were toadlike, but others were birdlike, or bovine, while some bore a chillingly human physiognomy.Henry H. Neff -- The Fiend And The Forge
- And here they were, hunting aimless bovines, thought Lou.David Baldacci -- Wish You Well
- Apply yourselves, above all, to the amelioration of the soil, to good manures, to the development of the equine, bovine, ovine, and porcine races.Gustave Flaubert -- Madame Bovary
- The boy breathed with steady, bovine calmness.Stephen King -- The Gunslinger
- I helped them in this by willfully taking on a muted bovine expression so as to avoid any undue attention.Khaled Hosseini -- And The Mountains Echoed
- When its call goes out, every bovine within hearing distance raises its head from grazing and moves toward the sound.John Steinbeck -- Travels with Charley
- To compare myself with a bovine would be both ridiculous and insulting, but I'm as fit as ever, if that is what you are asking.Christopher Paolini -- Brisingr
- The Lordsport men gazed on Theon with blank, bovine eyes, and he realized that they did not know who he was.George R.R. Martin -- A Clash of Kings
- She hated her face, her dull, stupid, bovine face, the vapid eyes, the red, shiny pimples, the nests of blackheads.Stephen King -- Carrie
- Sometimes we only watched them from a distance, all too familiar with their wagging, bovine heads, their haggard shoulders, their rotted, ragged clothing.Anne Rice -- Interview with the Vampire
- This was not dangerous, for he rarely actually struck us at the table, but it was designed to show us all up as dull-witted, bovine females.Barbara Kingsolver -- The Poisonwood Bible
- Seabiscuit floated along in a state of contented, bovine torpor.Laura Hillenbrand -- Seabiscuit
- And she believes that toxic injection of live bovine virus marked the beginning of Christa's brain dysfunction.Greg Mortenson & David Oliver Relin -- Three Cups of Tea
bovine = stupid and slow-moving like an ox or cow