"Fanny" in US English

[Lynne Murphy]

I've only heard 'fanny' used in UK contexts in discussions of American
cluelessness about the BrE sense (e.g. amusement with the term 'fanny
pack').  If one really wants to be euphemistic, one says something like
'front bottom'. A friend of mine's mother always advised her to 'keep her
hand on her ha'penny', an extremely euphemistic way of saying 'don't let
anyone in your knickers/panties'.

I discuss 'fanny' (mostly with relation to 'fanny pack') a little at:
http://separatedbyacommonlanguage.blogspot.com/2006/08/arse-ass-and-other-bottoms.html

Lynne

--On Sunday, February 11, 2007 9:11 pm -0500 "Douglas G. Wilson"
<douglas at NB.NET> wrote:

>> .... I wonder how widely known the American interpretation was in England
>> at that time.
>>
>>   I wonder too how frequent the sexual sense has been in Britain, esp.
>> since ca1900.  OED's cites are from _The Pearl_ (1879),  a slang
>> dictionary,  _Finnegans Wake_, and Erica Jong's 18th C. pastiche,
>> _Fanny_.
>>
>>   My impression is that it has usually been a kind of coy euphemism,
>> perhaps esp. among women, rather than a fully-sexualized term. But I
>> could be wrong; my reading of relevant British (and Irish) sources has
>> been comparatively limited.
>
> What do the UK-an scholars say, I wonder?
>
> One obvious speculation for the etymology of "fanny" = "backside" is "Aunt
> Fanny" as euphemism for "ass": is this "Aunt Fanny" old enough? I think I
> see an instance from 1934.
>
> [Likewise, I think an obvious speculation for the comparable "can" =
> "backside" would be euphemistic "ashcan" ("ashcan" = "buttocks" appears in
> the Cassell slang dictionary).]
>
> *Maybe* the two anatomical "fanny"s were unrelated etymologically.
>
> -- Doug Wilson
>
>
> --
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Dr M Lynne Murphy
Senior Lecturer and Head of Department
Linguistics and English Language
Arts B135
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QN

phone: +44-(0)1273-678844
http://separatedbyacommonlanguage.blogspot.com

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