More on wachi

[Tom Leonard]

>
> In OP, caNde' is the word for the male genitalia, glossed by Dorsey as
> 'scrotum'.  In Lakhota, the word for 'vagina' is caN.  (c = s^ here)  I've
> always surmised that these two terms must go back to an earlier *caN word
> that could refer to the privates of either sex, rather like certain
archaic
> uses of the word "shame" in English, as in "cover one's shame".  Dave's
> Biloxi data seems to go along with this, and it provides an interesting
> option for where that trailing -de in the OP form might have come from.
> Perhaps: tcaN, 'privates', was incorporated into tcaN-te, 'privates
> container'/'breechcloth', which in turn became the euphemism for 'male
> genitalia' ?
>

I once asked an elderly Ponca man about the similarity between the word s^aN
and s^aaN or s^aN ama, the name give to the Sioux. He told me: "After awhile
we couldn't keep saying s^aN because they could understand that....kinda
offended them.  So I guess them old folks changed it over to "s^aa" or "s^aN
a" or  "s^aN ama" -THAT one we understood.....that there were more than one
of  'em. But they never did catch that. "

> There is another word explicitly for 'penis' in MVS: z^e in OP and I
> believe c^He in Dakotan, which should go back to MVS *ye.  In Omaha, the
> word for 'breechcloth' is z^e-atigraN (not sure if that t is aspirated or
> not).

In Ponca the term for "apron" or "breechclout" is z^e atigthoN or z^e ati
agthoN.