How did the term for one of the ugliest funguses on God’s green earth come to mean naked pictures of attractive people? Where’s the connection?
I’d say it’s a synonym for ‘dirty’ or ‘filth’; incidentally, people eat corn smut. :eek:
I thought smut originally meant a mark/smudge made by soot, smoke, or dirt.
As others have implied, it’s pretty nasty stuff.
Interestingly, the term smutty to imply filthy pictures, word, images, language, etc, goes back to at least 1668.
Yes. It’s not that “smut” for porn is derived from the fungus, but that both terms are derived from staining with dirt or soot:
Merriam-Webster:
This is a bit rich coming from a guy devoted to shagging servant girls and writing about it afterwards in his celebrated diaries.