Bad words

[Mark A Mandel]

On Tue, 9 Jul 2002, Laurence Horn wrote:

#Actually, as I remarked earlier, "Manikin-Pis" is the spelling, and
#it's Belgian.  The statue is in the middle of Brussels, which is a
#mostly Flemish-speaking city.   I don't know if the written name
#counts as Walloon (francophone Belgain) or as a Flemish (=Dutch)
#transliteration (note also the largely un-French "k"), but the "pis"
#is definitely [pis] phonetically, as the standard French "pisse"
#would be pronounced.

MW OnLine says of the English "manikin":

Etymology: Dutch mannekijn little man, from Middle Dutch, diminutive of
man; akin to Old English man
Date: circa 1536

-- Mark A. Mandel
   Linguist at Large