Today’s post is adapted from a piece I wrote 2016 when Donald Trump was first running for office. His current legal woes stem from an alleged hush money payment made after the release of the so-called Hollywood Access tape; a payment made to prevent the leaking of more information that would have damaged his reputation even further.
A word of warning: The first link below is to an unedited version of the tape and the language may be shocking to some readers (in fact, if it’s not, you might want to check your pulse).
There’s nothing like a decade-old recording to mess up your bid for high office.
Given the (entirely justified, in my view) backlash that’s followed Donald Trump’s boastful conversation, it’s with some trepidation that I’ve chosen this week’s word. But this is a language newsletter after all, so here goes.
Puss is a relative latecomer to English, first noted in 1533, and pussy is its diminutive. No one is sure exactly where puss came from. It’s certainly not unique to English – Dutch has poes, Middle Low German has pūse, in Lithuania a cat can be puižė and in Ireland it can be puisín. That suggests there was a puss-like word for cat in a language preceding all those ones, but, like Macavity the Mystery Cat, when etymologists go hunting through earlier languages, that word seems not to be there.
At first puss meant cat, and only cat, but within a hundred years or so its meaning had extended to include woman. At first the sense was derogatory (in much the same way that catty is today), but over time puss and pussy also became terms of endearment.
Pussy, as slang for female genitalia, is first recorded in 1879, though etymonline says that usage is “probably older”. How much older is questionable, since pussy’s use as a term of endearment continued until at least the mid 1800s.
In any case, how did the anatomical sense arise? One explanation is that it happened by resemblance: by the 19th century, puss and pussy had become synonyms for things soft and furry – hence pussy willow, and pussy as 19th century slang for a fur coat.
Another explanation is that pussy in the anatomical sense is a cognate of the Old Norse puss (pocket, pouch), which also gives the Low German puse for vulva. That explanation doesn’t cut it for me – it seems a long jump from Old Norse straight to modern English. What’s more, le chat in French can also have both meanings, lending weight to the resemblance explanation.
Either way, once pussy had gained its new meaning, the opportunities for double entendres exploded. 1970s British comedy Are You Being Served featured a running gag involving Mrs Slocombe and her neurotic concern for the welfare of her pussy back at home. Nudge nudge, wink wink, cue laugh track. To be fair, the 1970s was rife with this kind of humour. The Benny Hill Show, which ran for a gobsmacking 34 years from 1955, generally featured at least one skit per episode of a scantily clad young woman being chased (unsuccessfully, I should add) by a leering Hill, with Yakety Sax playing cheerfully along as background music.
What’s new, pussycat? was a popular phrase in the Beatnik era and the title of a 1965 hit song for Tom Jones in 1965. It was also the theme song for a silly 1965 movie of the same name. That film was Woody Allen’s first foray into movie script writing and took its title from the main character’s habit of addressing female phone callers with that very question so he wouldn’t have to remember their names. And who can ever forget Pussy Galore, the character dreamed up by Ian Fleming for his 1959 James Bond novel Goldfinger. What a delightful age that was.
Whereas most slang words for genitalia, male or female, are considered offensive in polite society under any circumstances, pussy occupies a grey area. Use it to mean vagina, and you’ve definitely crossed a line. Use it to accuse someone of being a wimp, and plausible deniability (what kind of pussy, exactly, do you mean?) means you just might get away with it. Maybe.
One of the great albums.
Pussyfooting, for speaking evasively, is from 1903. No Pussyfooting is the name of a 1973 album by Brian Eno and Robert Fripp. Widely disparaged on its release, it’s now rightly considered a classic of ambient music (which nobody had heard of pre-1973).
Nobody was pussy-whipped before 1956, but RAF pilots during WWII definitely knew how to play pussy – or jump from cloud to cloud to avoid detection. This is not to be confused with playing possum, which involves remaining quite still so your stalker thinks you’re dead. It’s an art I believe I’ve perfected, especially when the rubbish needs taking out.
Wuss and wussy, from the early 1980s, are likely a smushing together of wimp and pussy. It probably says something about my social awareness that the first time I heard wuss wasn’t until around 1990. Or maybe I’m so ruggedly masculine that no one had cause to use the word in my presence. Yep, that’ll be it.
Puss, in the sense of face, is unrelated to household pets: that word comes from the Irish pus, meaning lip or mouth. Hence sourpuss for a grumpy-faced person.
Which brings us back to Donald Trump, the current Sourpuss in Chief. And, as far as I’m concerned, the less said about him the better. One thing I will say is that what got him in hot water back in 2016 was less his choice of words, and more what he boasted about having done. Sexual assault is sexual assault in any language. The hell with him.
Bits and specious
In 2007, Entertainment Weekly ranked Pussy Galore second in its list of favourite Bond girls. The winner? Honey Ryder. Yahoo! Movies reported that not only was Pussy Galore the best Bond girl name, it was also the rudest. “US censors almost cut it from Goldfinger,” it said.
While we’re down here in the gutter, here’s a question. What do you do if everyone keeps nicking off with your town’s sign? If you’re the good people of Shitterton in Devon, England, you raise the money for a really heavy block of Purbeck Stone with the town’s name carved into it (£680, since you ask). Local man Ian Ventham surely spoke for everyone when he said: “We thought, ‘Let’s put in a ton and a half of stone and see them try and take that away in the back of a Ford Fiesta’.” Even though it’s too late, I have another suggestion – change the name of your town. Price: £0.
That’s what the residents of Fucking, Austria did. Clever f*****s.
Since I’m on a roll, Shitterton’s name really is as unfortunate as it sounds. The stream that runs through the town was used as a dunny way back when, and the rest you already know.
Next time you fall into a paroxysm of anything you can thank the Ancient Greeks for making it possible. The word – meaning a sudden convulsion – is built from para-, beyond (hence paranormal and paranoid) and oxys, sharp, pointed, acrid. Oxys also gives us oxygen (the element required for anything to burn, which often produces acrid results), oxymoron (pointedly foolish) and oxalis, that slightly acidic, yellow weed so beloved of gardeners. When we were children, my siblings and I used to munch on oxalis, then tell each other it was poisonous and we would all get sick and die. Didn’t happen. However, we did build up a strong immunity to dog pee.
Quote of the week
Beware of the man who denounces women writers; his penis is tiny and he cannot spell.
Erica Jong
>That explanation doesn’t cut it for me – it seems a long jump from Old Norse straight to modern English
I might not be understanding what you mean here, but "pusa (posa)" is attested in Old English as "bag, wallet", so it isn't coming (directly) from ON? At least, it's listed in Sweet's Anglo-Saxon dictionary, on which I base my assertion here :) And maybe it's been hanging around dialectically ever since? But see earlier; perhaps I'm missing your point.