1. Of or pertaining to oxen.; resembling a ruminant mammal of the genus Bos; such as, an ox, cow, or buffalo.
2. A reference to the subfamily Bovinae, which includes cattle, buffalo, and kudus.
3. Applied figuratively to people or their behavior to mean "dull, stolid, stupid, oxlike; cowlike", and "listless".

An infectious degenerative brain disease occurring in cattle; mad cow disease: Bovine spongiform encephalopathy is a fatal, neurodegenerative disease in cattle that causes a spongy degeneration in the brain and spinal cord.

BSE is a neurodegenerative disease found in domestic cattle which is related to a number of other similar diseases found in other animal species, including humans.

The most well-known of these other diseases are scrapie, found in sheep, and Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease, found in humans.

The family of diseases is caused by an abnormally configured protein called a prion. The function of the protein in its normal configuration is not certain.

The diseases are similar to Alzheimer's disease in humans, except the progressive loss of brain function is more rapid.