Cat lovers, search for “feline” on the Art Institute of Chicago’s online collection. You’ll be delighted.
If you were searching for artwork featuring cats, you’d most likely search “cat”. Instead, searching “feline” brings up another range of work—a little more ancient in scope. I love how languages work like that. Makes me want to search for all sorts of “secondary” phrases for animals like canine, bovine, etc.
Here’s a list of animal words ending with “INE”
- Anserine – geese
- Aquiline – eagle
- Assinine – donkey
- Bovine – cattle
- Cancrine – crab
- Canine – dog
- Cervine – deer
- Corvine – crow
- Equine – horse
- Elapine – snake
- Elaphine – deer
- Feline – cat
- Hircine – goat
- Leonine – lion
- Leporine – rabbit, hare
- Lupine – wolf
- Murine – rodent
- Pavonine – peacock
- Piscine – fish
- Porcine – pig
- Rusine – deer
- Serpentine – snake
- Ursine – bear
- Vulpine – fox
Some day I’ll so searches on these and report on the counts. Maybe I’ll even dig into the Art Institute’s Public API and pull the counts programmatically. Fancy!
Enjoy these eight hand-selected images of felines from the Art Institute of Chicago’s online collection
