What Cecil article has the cartoon with a woman and the word hottentot on it. I found a discription for hottentot in a medical oddities book, and the word means more than a fast and loose lady. I find it was the name given to the women of a South African tribe, that practiced genital manipulation from childhood onward. The women were displayed as oddities in the 1800’s around Europe. The tribe broke up and married outside the tribe. One woman was known as the Hottentot Venus. I certainly won’t be using hottentot as a slang word any longer. I always figured it came from the Flapper culture in the 1920’s.
And the question you want answered is…?
Nope, what you describe is what I’ve always thought of, more or less, as Hottentot, not familiar with your other description ascribed to Cecil.
Presumably this one:
Seems to be missing the all-important question mark, however.
Y’know, I could have sworn that Cecil did do a column on the “Hottentot Venus,” but I have been unable to find it, either in the archives or in the books.
Women of the Khoikhoi (formerly known as Hottentots, now considered derogatory) group of Southern Africa, and to a lesser extent men, as well as the related San (aka “Bushmen”) frequently show steatopygia, that is, very prominent buttocks. In the nineteenth century, this led to Saartje Baartman, a khoikhoi woman, being put on display in Europe as the Hottentot Venus. Baartman’s remains were recently repatriated to South Africa.
Khoikhoi social structure was largely destroyed during the course of European colonization, and as the article linked to by **Operation Ripper ** indicates, there are no longer considered to be any “pure” Khoikhoi due to interbreeding.
What makes the Hottentot so hot?
The eminent scholar Sir Mix-A-Lot offers the following position statement:
Baby got back!
Q.E.D. got it right.
What Cecil article has the cartoon with a woman and the word hottentot on it?
I can’t find the article that I’m sure had a cartoon labeled hottentot. I wanted to check it out, and see if it was a historicaly proper hottentot.
I wonder whether this is something to do with female circumcision.
Some time ago I stumbled on a book about the birth of the Matabele, a sort of early offshoot from Shaka’s Zulu’s
It seems that deserting sailors had bred in with local Southern tribes, and created cultural hybrids (the Griquas for one) that rode horses, dressed in leather and used guns.
The South marching invaders were stopped in their tracks, by techniques rather similar to the Kommando in the Boer War.
Probably there had been earlier incursions, female circumcision might be a way of obliterating genetic ‘telltales’.
No on it being a circumcision difference. The women strectched their privites to make them larger.
Harmonious Discord writes:
> What Cecil article has the cartoon with a woman and the word hottentot on it. I
> found a discription for hottentot in a medical oddities book, and the word
> means more than a fast and loose lady. I find it was the name given to the
> women of a South African tribe, that practiced genital manipulation from
> childhood onward. The women were displayed as oddities in the 1800’s around
> Europe. The tribe broke up and married outside the tribe. One woman was
> known as the Hottentot Venus. I certainly won’t be using hottentot as a slang
> word any longer. I always figured it came from the Flapper culture in the 1920’s.
When was the word used in flapper culture in the 1920’s? I can’t find any reference to such a use in either the OED or by some searching using Google. The word, as previous posters have mentioned, is an old-fashioned (and now usually considered derogatory) name for certain peoples living in what is now South Africa. Many of the references that come up on Google are to a woman known as “The Hottentot Venus” who was displayed around Europe (to sideshow audiences and such) in the early 19th century. Could you please explain to us what the slang sense of the word is that you have been using up to now?
The Khoisan peoples. There’s a very clear phenotypical difference between Khoikhoi and !San people and the Bantu and related peoples of most of the rest of sub-Saharan Africa. “Hottentot” is an obsolete term, now considered offensive, for the Khoikhoi, derived from a “hobson-jobson” misunderstanding by the original Dutch settlers of their self-appelation. And yes, it was also in the mid-20th century a slangy term for “wild savage” with no specific reference to the Khoikhoi people.
(By the way, it’s worth noting that during the Apartheid era and for some years before, the term “Coloured” had a specific meaning which was not synonymous with “Black” – it meant the non-tribal group descended from interracial crosses between Khoikhoi and European colonists, and was a distinct ethnoracial group with specific rights defined in law, quite separate from the “Kaffirs” (also now considered highly offensive, and meaning the Bantu nations and tribes taken as a group).
I thought it was from the roaring twenties and refered to loose women. I might have seen a woman dressed as a flapper and said hey look a hottentot.
I haven’t been able to locate the cartoon in question, but I did come across some information about the artist:
I wonder if you’re conflating it with a film/play which was produced during that time period. The Hottentot.
Perhaps you are thinking of hotsy-totsy (also here), meaning “just right, or perfect.”
While the links do not specify the date of the coinage, it was used as a song title as early as 1925. My grandmother, born in 1900, used to use the expression regularly, and from photos I have seen photos dressed “flapper” style in the 1920s.
According to this it’s not due to stretching, it’s natural.
Colibri seen the phrase hotsy totsy reminds me I have heard that term used, and I buried it thinking that hottentot was hotsy totsy.
I still would like to know the article with the cartoon. It’s a curiousity thing, I know I saw it, and want to find it now to put it to rest.