"p ússa" in Icelandic

[Peter A. McGraw]

Both pussa and pússa are cited in Cleasby/Vigfusson, the former defined as
in my earlier post and the latter defined as a purse or pouch.

Peter Mc.

--On Wednesday, August 24, 2005 8:43 AM -0400 "Martin, Katherine"
<katherine.martin at OUP.COM> wrote:

> FWIW, the usual modern Icelandic word for the female pudendum is píka
> (more specifically vagina). The word for vulva is sköp. Neither I nor
> my Icelandic husband has ever heard the word pússa. He thought it
> sounded foreign, maybe Danish. The citations files for Orðabók
> Háskólans, the Icelandic historical lexicography project, show only
> one example for pússa, from an 1844 letter:
>
> "Pater ertu ok princeps feiti, / procossul ertu svarta pússa."
>
> This is in some strange Latin-Icelandic hybrid, and all I can
> diefinitively say about the pússa in question is that it is black. Any
> Icelander at that time who wrote Latin probably studied in Denmark, so
> the Danish word mentioned in previous posts seems the likely source
> here.
>
> Katherine



***************************************************************************
Peter A. McGraw       Linfield College        McMinnville, Oregon
******************* pmcgraw at linfield.edu ****************************