dirty words in dictionaries revisted

[Wilson Gray]

On Dec 17, 2004, at 11:58 PM, Laurence Horn wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: dirty words in dictionaries revisted
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> At 11:22 PM -0500 12/17/04, Wilson Gray wrote:
>> On Dec 17, 2004, at 12:04 PM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
>>
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>>> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>>> Poster:       Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at YAHOO.COM>
>>> Subject:      Re: dirty words in dictionaries revisted
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>>> Literature has preserved at least one 18th C "pee" from Britain. If
>>> it
>>> was chiefly a child's term, it could easily have gone
>>> unrecorded/unfound for 150 years.  The matter may not be resolvable.
>>>
>>> JL
>>
>> Needless to say. The French still say "faire pipi" to this day,
>> probably just to urinate off Dubya.
>>
>> -Wilson Gray
>>
> Well, they do have a slight advantage in that their "pipi" preserves
> (and reduplicates) the vowel of their "pisse", while we're tenser
> when we "pee" and laxer when we "piss", so it seems more likely that
> ours was an initialism-type euphemism (à la effing, etc.) than that
> theirs was.  (Not to mention the fact that their letter is pronounced
> [pe], so the initialism wouldn't get too far off the ground.)
>
> L
>

Why, of course, Larry! I didn't intend to suggest otherwise! I
apologize for the misunderstanding.

-Wilson