America's 10 Most-Wanted Words

[Aaron E. Drews]

on 3/5/00 7:30 PM, Fred Shapiro wrote:

> On Wed, 3 May 2000, Aaron E. Drews wrote:
>
>> I have to agree with Mark.  I think it's "yonic".  I think both "phallic"
>> and "yonic" have Sanskritic roots.... or at least that both come from the
>> Kama Sutra.
>
> Do you have any basis for this assertion with regard to "phallic"?
>

Actually, no.  I thought both "yoni" and something like "phalli" was used in
the Kama Sutra.  I just looked it up on the web (in the name of research!...
tantra.org, if anybody is interested) and I was mistaken.  "Yoni" is used,
as is "phallus" and this is how I made the jump.  I have heard the term
"yonic" used before, which had reinforced my mis-interpretation of the Kama
Sutra.

"Phallus", according to my American Heritage, has Latin from late Greek.  To
me this hints at IE, but that's something else.

Sorry about the unacademic assertion.

--Aaron

________________________________________________________________________
Aaron E. Drews                               The University of Edinburgh
http://www.ling.ed.ac.uk/~aaron      Departments of English Language and
aaron at ling.ed.ac.uk                    Theoretical & Applied Linguistics

 "MERE ACCUMULATION OF OBSERVATIONAL EVIDENCE IS NOT PROOF"
  --Death