Spanish and French words for pussy

[Aaron Drews]

On Thu, 24 Jun 1999, Jim Rader wrote:

}French is as much a written language to me as Latin, so I can
}contribute no native intuitions, but I note that Herail and Lovatt's
}_Dictionary of Modern Colloquial French_ (Routledge & Kegan Paul,
}1984) gloss both <chat> and <chatte> as "pussy" = "vagina."
        Would anybody happen to know if this is related to the British
meaning of "shag"?  (I'm in a computer lab right now and don't have handy
access to a dictionary)


}> Neither of these desk-size dictionaries alludes to a naughty meaning, but I
}> did once see a pornographic film in French (which I hereby declare to have
}> been for purposes of linguistic research), and emerged with the distinct
}> impression that "chatte" is also used in reference to female pudenda.

        If it's in French, does that make it an "arthouse" film, or
"erotic" rather than pornographic?  Also, everyone says there is no
dialogue in these films, so what kind of linguistic research can take
place with little or no speaking? :-)

--Aaron

 =======================================================================
Aaron E. Drews                               The University of Edinburgh
+44 (0)131 650-3485                      Departments of English Language
http://www.ling.ed.ac.uk/~aaron                          and Linguistics

"MERE ACCUMULATION OF OBSERVATIONAL EVIDENCE IS NOT PROOF"
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