eggcorn: "profound" (profane) words

Wed Aug 1 13:49:59 UTC 2007

It's psychologically interesting that, applied to males, the word could be interpreted - and  probably has been by some benighted persons - as a shortening of "pussycat," a kind of sweet or docile individual, hence (in this interpretation) a patsy, pushover, weakling, sissy, etc.

  My guess, though, is that 99.44% of male speakers automatically associate it with the sexual term. In theory that's as Freudian as it Foucaultian.

  Also psychologically interesting is that OED shows the now opprobrious "prick" ("bastard") in limited EModE use as a gal-to-guy endearment, though the cites - the earliest is a bit odd - sugg. it may be more Latin  than English.  This meaning would seem almost impossible today.

  As Larry observes, men generally are far less infuriated to be called the P-word than women are to be called the C-word.  A Freudian as well as a Foucaultian explanation is possible here as well.

  JL

Charles Doyle <cdoyle at UGA.EDU> wrote:
  ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: Charles Doyle
Subject: Re: eggcorn: "profound" (profane) words
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Nicely put, Larry.

It's interesting that "pussy" seems to be fast loosing its taboo aspect; we hear the epithet now on prime-time TV, always directed at males, I believe.

Maybe not all dialects understand the term to be anatomical, a synecdoche? Back in grade school (in Texas), at least until I started reading dictionaries, it was the ONLY term I knew for the female sexual part (vaguely envisioned). I must have known the feline sense of the word too, but I didn't think of it as a metaphor in its anatomical application.

--Charlie
_____________________________________________________________

>
>This has been discussed in feminist linguistic treatises for a while.
>My take is that while a woman can be put down purely by reference to
>the fact that she *is* a woman (whence the synecdoche of "cunt" and
>to a lesser extent "broad", along with metonymies or stereotyped
>traits in earlier usage--cf. "skirt", "frail", etc.), a man cannot be
>similarly insulted, or at least not without some difficulty. To call
>a man a prick is to insult him for *stereotypical* male behavior
>exhibited by *some* men--and some women in positions of power or
>authority; to call a woman (or indeed a man, as in the military) a
>cunt is to insult her for *being* a woman (or to insult a man by
>assimilating him to the set of women). If you can call your female
>boss a prick, you're not insulting her by pretending she's a man,
>you're objecting to her behavior, but if you call your male
>underlings (in a military, prison, or athletic context) cunts (or to
>a lesser extent pussies), you are doing precisely that--mutatis
>mutandis.* (You're pretending he's a woman and insulting her qua
>woman.) It's a subtle difference--I've seen the sentiments expressed
>that all women are cunts (Henry Miller, perhaps?) and that all men
>are pricks--but the insults don't work quite the same way. Of
>course, there's the more general point that there are a lot more
>metonymic expressions for demeaning, objectifying, or insulting women
>by reference to body parts and physical attributes than there are for
>men, although the asymmetry is perhaps less dramatic than in the
>early 70s when some of these discrepancies were first systematically
>observed.
>
>LH
>
>*Similarly, your male or female boss can be "a real bastard", but
>only your female boss can be "a real bitch", unless you're
>deliberately transferring the sex-marked feature [+ female] to a man,
>along with the obnoxious behavior.
>
>
>
>>
>>Now, here is something interesting (at least to me): Only in fairly recent
>>years have Brits begun referring to one another regularly - on the street,
>>so to speak - as "assholes" or, for the more linguistically conservative,
>>"arseholes". There was a time, not long ago, when "asshole" was considered a
>>total Americanism, and British men referred to one another, in this context,
>>after a few pints down t'pub, as "cunts". This practice does continue to
>>this day though it is losing ground to the Americanism. So, I would be
>>extremely interested to know what American females would think - in the name
>>of political correctness - of British males referring to each other (male to
>>male) as "cunts". I was going to make this multiple choice but there were
>>too many permutations to make it viable.
>>DAD
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>No virus found in this outgoing message.
>>Checked by AVG Free Edition.
>>Version: 7.5.476 / Virus Database: 269.11.0/927 - Release Date: 30/7/2007
>>17:02
>>
>>------------------------------------------------------------
>>The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>
>------------------------------------------------------------
>The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

---------------------------------
Need a vacation? Get great deals to amazing places on Yahoo! Travel.

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org