# Hottentot more than you thought it meant **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [June 3, 2006, 2:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hottentot-more-than-you-thought-it-meant/359240 "2006-06-03T02:41:22Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Harmonious\_Discord](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/74df32/32.png) [@Harmonious\_Discord](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Harmonious_Discord)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2006, 2:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hottentot-more-than-you-thought-it-meant/359240/1 "2006-06-03T02:41:22Z")
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. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2006, 3:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hottentot-more-than-you-thought-it-meant/359240/2 "2006-06-03T03:17:36Z")
And the question you want answered is…? ---
**Author:** ![Operation\_Ripper](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/34f0e0/32.png) [@Operation\_Ripper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Operation_Ripper)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2006, 3:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hottentot-more-than-you-thought-it-meant/359240/3 "2006-06-03T03:19:40Z")
Nope, what you describe is what I’ve always thought of, more or less, as [Hottentot](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hottentot), not familiar with your other description ascribed to Cecil. ---
**Author:** ![Q.E.D](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/51bf81/32.png) [@Q.E.D](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Q.E.D)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2006, 3:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hottentot-more-than-you-thought-it-meant/359240/4 "2006-06-03T03:34:20Z")
[QUOTE=John Mace] And the question you want answered is…? [/QUOTE] Presumably this one: > [@The OP](#): > > What Cecil article has the cartoon with a woman and the word hottentot on it. Seems to be missing the all-important question mark, however. ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2006, 3:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hottentot-more-than-you-thought-it-meant/359240/5 "2006-06-03T03:53:19Z")
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](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steatopygia), that is, very prominent buttocks. In the nineteenth century, this led to [Saartje Baartman](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saartje_Baartman), a khoikhoi woman, being put on display in Europe as the [Hottentot Venus](http://www.english.emory.edu/Bahri/Hott.html). Baartman’s remains were recently [repatriated to South Africa.](http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/1957240.stm) 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. ---
**Author:** ![astro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9dc877/32.png) [@astro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astro)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2006, 3:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hottentot-more-than-you-thought-it-meant/359240/6 "2006-06-03T03:59:59Z")
What makes the Hottentot so hot? ---
**Author:** ![astro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9dc877/32.png) [@astro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astro)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2006, 4:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hottentot-more-than-you-thought-it-meant/359240/7 "2006-06-03T04:08:55Z")
[The ‘Hottentot Venus’ John R. Baker](http://www.heretical.com/miscella/baker4.html) > [@](#): > > Unquestionably the external genitalia and secondary sexual characters of the female are the strangest features of Sanid anatomy. ---
**Author:** ![Operation\_Ripper](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/34f0e0/32.png) [@Operation\_Ripper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Operation_Ripper)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2006, 4:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hottentot-more-than-you-thought-it-meant/359240/8 "2006-06-03T04:09:27Z")
[QUOTE=astro] What makes the Hottentot so hot? [/QUOTE] [Steatopygia](http://www.bellalopez.com/images/booty/ip206.jpg) ---
**Author:** ![Crescend](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/b9bd4f/32.png) [@Crescend](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crescend)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2006, 5:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hottentot-more-than-you-thought-it-meant/359240/9 "2006-06-03T05:28:09Z")
[QUOTE=astro] What makes the Hottentot so hot? [/QUOTE] The eminent scholar Sir Mix-A-Lot offers the following position statement: _Baby got back!_ ---
**Author:** ![Harmonious\_Discord](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/74df32/32.png) [@Harmonious\_Discord](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Harmonious_Discord)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2006, 10:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hottentot-more-than-you-thought-it-meant/359240/10 "2006-06-03T10:43:30Z")
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. ---
**Author:** ![FRDE](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e68b1a/32.png) [@FRDE](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FRDE)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2006, 12:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hottentot-more-than-you-thought-it-meant/359240/11 "2006-06-03T12:30:52Z")
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’. ---
**Author:** ![Harmonious\_Discord](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/74df32/32.png) [@Harmonious\_Discord](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Harmonious_Discord)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2006, 12:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hottentot-more-than-you-thought-it-meant/359240/12 "2006-06-03T12:56:39Z")
No on it being a circumcision difference. The women strectched their privites to make them larger. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2006, 1:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hottentot-more-than-you-thought-it-meant/359240/13 "2006-06-03T13:37:15Z")
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? ---
**Author:** ![Polycarp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/82dd89/32.png) [@Polycarp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Polycarp)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2006, 1:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hottentot-more-than-you-thought-it-meant/359240/14 "2006-06-03T13:44:32Z")
The [Khoisan peoples](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khoisan). 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). ---
**Author:** ![Harmonious\_Discord](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/74df32/32.png) [@Harmonious\_Discord](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Harmonious_Discord)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2006, 1:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hottentot-more-than-you-thought-it-meant/359240/15 "2006-06-03T13:52:23Z")
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. ---
**Author:** ![Q.E.D](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/51bf81/32.png) [@Q.E.D](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Q.E.D)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2006, 3:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hottentot-more-than-you-thought-it-meant/359240/16 "2006-06-03T15:19:05Z")
I haven’t been able to locate the cartoon in question, but I did come across some information about the artist: > [@](#): > > **[Signorino, Slug](http://www.wittyworld.com/whoswho/whoswho-S.html)** > > BIRTH: September 17, 1938, Mishowaka, IN USA SPECIALTY: Illustration, Story Strips, Books BOOKS/FILMS: Author of THe Straight Dope in Chicago Reader 1985; How to be your own Selfish Pig, Macaulay 1981; Junior CB Picture, Downing 1978; Publisher of Chicago Review Press, Davic C. Cook, Children’s Press PUBLICATIONS/SYNDICATED FEATURES: Chicago Reader “The Strait Dope” Weekly 1975; San Diego Reader “Restaurant Review” Weekly 1983 CURRENT RESIDENCE: LaPorte, IN USA. ---
**Author:** ![Q.E.D](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/51bf81/32.png) [@Q.E.D](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Q.E.D)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2006, 3:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hottentot-more-than-you-thought-it-meant/359240/17 "2006-06-03T15:24:12Z")
[QUOTE=Harmonious Discord] 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. [/QUOTE] I wonder if you’re conflating it with a film/play which was produced during that time period. [_The Hottentot_](http://www.answers.com/topic/the-hottentot). > [@](#): > > Previously filmed in 1923, the William Collier Sr.-Victor Mapes stage play The Hottentot was exhumed as an Edward Everett Horton vehicle in 1929. An inveterate horse lover, Sam Harrington (Horton) brags to his girlfriend Peggy Fairfax (Patsy Ruth Miller) that he is an expert rider. In truth, Sam hasn’t a clue as to which end of the horse to mount, meaning that the script will inevitably require him to put his money where his mouth is. The climax finds poor Sam astride the contentious nag “Hottentot” during an all-important steeplechase. ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2006, 3:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hottentot-more-than-you-thought-it-meant/359240/18 "2006-06-03T15:33:42Z")
[QUOTE=Harmonious Discord] 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. [/QUOTE] Perhaps you are thinking of [hotsy-totsy](http://www.hotsytotsyboys.com/song.htm) (also [here](http://www.wordsmith.org/words/hotsy-totsy.html)), meaning “just right, or perfect.” > [@](#): > > Coined by Billy DeBeck, cartoonist (1892-1942), famed for his comic strip “Barney Google and Snuffy Smith”. Another of his coinage that has found a place in the English language dictionaries is heebie-jeebies meaning jitters or creeps. 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. ---
**Author:** ![astro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9dc877/32.png) [@astro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astro)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2006, 3:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hottentot-more-than-you-thought-it-meant/359240/19 "2006-06-03T15:43:06Z")
[QUOTE=Harmonious Discord] No on it being a circumcision difference. The women strectched their privites to make them larger. [/QUOTE] [According to this it’s not due to stretching](http://72.14.207.104/search?q=cache:OzSBDEZ32BEJ:www.heretical.com/miscella/baker4.html+Unquestionably+the+external+genitalia+and+secondary+sexual+characters+of+the+female+are+the+strangest+features+of+Sanid+anatomy&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=1), it’s natural. > [@](#): > > In the present century our knowledge of the female genitalia of Bushwomen has been extended chiefly by studies carried out on living subjects in southern Africa by Pöch, Drury, and Villiers. All these authors agree that there is no evidence of artificial elongation of the labia minora. ---
**Author:** ![Harmonious\_Discord](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/74df32/32.png) [@Harmonious\_Discord](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Harmonious_Discord)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2006, 4:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hottentot-more-than-you-thought-it-meant/359240/20 "2006-06-03T16:57:47Z")
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. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hottentot-more-than-you-thought-it-meant/359240.md?page=2)