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- From: Bruce.Tindall@launchpad.unc.edu (Bruce Tindall)
- Subject: Silly Pussy
-
- In article <1993Feb22.231046.4729@unislc.uucp> dw@unislc.uucp (Dan Wright) writes:
- >Paul Wallich at Trivializers R Us wrote:
- >: on. Then of course, "silly" used to mean "saintly" so go figure.
-
- Not according to the OED. They've got pitiable, defenceless, weak,
- insignificant, ignorant, lowly, feeble-minded, foolish, (some of which
- are obsolete), but not saintly. However, they could be missing a
- reference, I suppose, as the term "God's Fool" has, I believe, been
- applied to some saints. Paul may be on to something. Anyone care to
- pursue it (for food)?
-
- Dan continues:
- >"Purse" and "pussy" have the same root. That's one of my favorites.
-
- Again, not according to the OED. They give an etymology of "purse"
- that relates it to "bourse" (as in the French for stock market) but
- with a caveat that they're not sure how the b became a p. In any case,
- they give it a Romance Languages genealogy, whereas pussy is found to
- have cognates in Germanic languages as a word for cat, but no etymology
- is given. Nor is there any explanation for how it came to mean female
- genitalia. OED gives a 1664 quotation in which it may or may not have
- that meaning; the next oldest is from 1879. There's a 1583 quotation
- in which "pussy" obviously means "woman", i.e., a person, not only
- one part of her anatomy, so maybe by synecdoche (the rest of you
- can look it up when you get home) it came to mean genitalia? That
- last speculation is mine, not the OED's.
-
- And using this post as evidence, Terry, let's have a couple of new
- lines in the FAQ, OK?
- T. Bruce *has* plugged books not written by his family.
- Fb. He has plugged such books other than the Oxford English Dictionary.
-
- Bruce "would you buy a used tome from this man" Tindall
-