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Is this true? 14 comments
guest
· 5 years ago
used in colloquial English for 500 years, and similarly has no connection with pusillanimous or any other Latinate word.
* There's no positive evidence for the pusillanimous pussy derivation as a genuine historical source — it seems to be a sporadic folk etymology.
* The pronunciation difference (onset [pj] vs. [p], vowel [ʊ] vs. [u]) makes the pusillanimous pussy derivation implausible in any case.
The idea that the "weakling" sense of pussy should be treated as a taboo word because of a connection to the slang term for female genitals seems to be almost as historically incorrect as the pusillanimous pussy theory. When Paul Krugman wrote in 2008 "I'm a pussycat", the New York Times editorial board didn't need to intervene to enforce their policies on taboo language. Nor was any problem perceived in the recent NYT obituary for Phil Pepe, which quotes his column on Thurman Munson:
“Down deep he was a pussycat, a man of compassion and understanding and great human
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* There's no positive evidence for the pusillanimous pussy derivation as a genuine historical source — it seems to be a sporadic folk etymology.
* The pronunciation difference (onset [pj] vs. [p], vowel [ʊ] vs. [u]) makes the pusillanimous pussy derivation implausible in any case.
The idea that the "weakling" sense of pussy should be treated as a taboo word because of a connection to the slang term for female genitals seems to be almost as historically incorrect as the pusillanimous pussy theory. When Paul Krugman wrote in 2008 "I'm a pussycat", the New York Times editorial board didn't need to intervene to enforce their policies on taboo language. Nor was any problem perceived in the recent NYT obituary for Phil Pepe, which quotes his column on Thurman Munson:
“Down deep he was a pussycat, a man of compassion and understanding and great human
Is this true? 14 comments
guest
· 5 years ago
pusillanimis < pusillus "small, insignificant" + anima "breath, spirit". And it does have a similar meaning ("Of a person: lacking in courage or strength of purpose; faint-hearted, craven, cowardly"), which has made the folk etymology seem plausible to some. But aside from the lack of evidence for any historical connection, the divergent pronunciation of the first syllables argues against any notion that pussy is just a shortened form of pusillanimous: [pʊ] vs. [pju].
So to sum up:
* There's a plausible and well documented etymology for the sense of pussy in question, namely puss + y pussy = childish or colloquial word for "pet cat" term of endearment for a woman sweet or amiable woman sweet or effeminate man weakling/coward/sissy, with the parallel development of pussy = female genitals lurking somewhere in the background.
* Puss is Germanic in origin, and definitely is not a shortened form of the Latinate word pusillanimous. The hypocoristic ending -y has been widely
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So to sum up:
* There's a plausible and well documented etymology for the sense of pussy in question, namely puss + y pussy = childish or colloquial word for "pet cat" term of endearment for a woman sweet or amiable woman sweet or effeminate man weakling/coward/sissy, with the parallel development of pussy = female genitals lurking somewhere in the background.
* Puss is Germanic in origin, and definitely is not a shortened form of the Latinate word pusillanimous. The hypocoristic ending -y has been widely
But the only real difference in meaning between pussy and pussycat as descriptions of (let's say) male non-torturers is that pussy has negative connotations (and a widely-accepted current association with a taboo word), while pussycat is positively evaluated.