twat

[Jonathan Lighter]

Well, I hope OED hasn't compounded his error - which was of a rather different kind.

JL

Fred Shapiro <fred.shapiro at YALE.EDU> wrote:
---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: Fred Shapiro
Subject: Re: twat
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On Tue, 15 Mar 2005, Jonathan Lighter wrote:

> Besides the usu. meaning, OED lists "twat" as "U.S. dial. The buttocks."
> There is an unequivocal (wordlist) cite from 1950. However, I find the
> second ex. to be ambiguous at best.
>
> Is anybody familiar with "twat" as a U.S. synonym for backside? Or is
> this likely to be an error?

Robert Browning was a renowned expert on this word. Perhaps his writings
will yield some insight.

Fred Shapiro


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Fred R. Shapiro Editor
Associate Librarian for Collections and YALE DICTIONARY OF QUOTATIONS
Access and Lecturer in Legal Research Yale University Press,
Yale Law School forthcoming
e-mail: fred.shapiro at yale.edu http://quotationdictionary.com
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