cowsay(1)
Display a message spoken by an ASCII art cow (or other animal).
Synopsis
cowsay [OPTION]... [MESSAGE]Description
cowsay reads a message from standard input or command-line arguments and displays it in a speech bubble spoken by an ASCII art cow. It's primarily used for entertainment and adding personality to shell scripts, login messages, and command output.
The cow's appearance can be customized using different cowfile templates (cows, dragons, sheep, etc.), and various options control the expression and behavior of the character.
Common options
| Flag | What it does |
|---|---|
-f cowfile | Specify a cowfile (template) to use; e.g., dragon, turtle, sheep |
-l | List all available cowfiles installed on the system |
-e eyes | Set the eye characters; default is 'oo', use 'XX' for dead, '**' for stars |
-T tongue | Set the tongue characters; e.g., '-T U' for a tongue sticking out |
-W width | Wrap message text at specified column width |
-n | Suppress the default word wrapping and preserve line breaks |
-b | Make the cow look borg-like (heavy, metallic) |
-d | Make the cow look dead or asleep (uses dead eyes and droopy tongue) |
-g | Make the cow look greedy (wide eyes and lolling tongue) |
-p | Make the cow look paranoid (eyes looking in different directions) |
-s | Make the cow look stoned or sleepy (squinting eyes and tongue) |
-t | Make the cow look tired (eyes closed or nearly closed) |
Examples
Display a simple message in a speech bubble from a cow
cowsay 'Hello, World!'Pipe text to cowsay via standard input
echo 'Have a nice day!' | cowsayUse the dragon cowfile instead of the default cow
cowsay -f dragon 'I am a dragon!'List all available cowfiles (dragons, sheep, tux penguin, etc.)
cowsay -lMake the cow look dead with 'XX' eyes and drooping tongue
cowsay -d 'I am dead'Customize eyes to stars and add a protruding tongue
cowsay -e '**' -T 'U' 'Woozy!'Display a random fortune in a cow's speech bubble, wrapped at 50 chars
fortune | cowsay -W 50Use turtle cowfile and pipe to lolcat for rainbow coloring
cowsay -f turtle 'slow and steady' | lolcat