I was flipping through a catalog that appeared to be from the early fifties or late forties wherein I came across a book with the unfortunate title “Games you can play with you pussy”.
I showed it to some friends and merriment was had by all.
But it made me wonder how a nickname for cats came to be a nickname for female genitalia. When did this begin and why?
According to Phrase Finder forum, it goes back a fair way.
Well, what I just posted there might be a UL, darn it! :smack:
From here:
IIRC one of the meanings of the celtic rune “perth” is a cup, or vagina. Until now I never thought of that being like “purse.”
From a Thread last month about this where I replied:
Pussy to mean the female pudenda doesn’t show up until the 1879 quote that Ice Wolf cited from the OED. The earlier senses are not convincing. We may have to wait until the next volume of Random House Hist. Dict. of American Slang comes out.
Interestingly, the animal that was used as a metaphor for female sex parts in the Middle Ages and later was the rabbit, which was commonly called con(e)y going back to the Latin. Possibly because of the double meaning (coney=cunny=cunt) the name of the animal seems to have changed to rabbit both in English and French.
In Spanish it is rabbit making possible the follwing joke:
Q. What is the animal which can fly the highest?
A. A flight attendant’s rabbit (pussy).
And when someone mentions “rabbit”, like if they say they like rabbit, someone will ask what kind of rabbit, the kind you grab like this (motion with your hand like grabbing something from above) or the kind you grab like this (motion with your hand like grabbing something from below).
The Macquarie Dictionary aspect
quote:
Perhaps Swedish dialectal ‘pusa’, akin to Icelandic ‘puss’ meaning Mare’s vulva
And in German, you get the same joke but with “rabbit” replaced by “bear.”
Isn’t the Straight Dope just a marvelous place? Such things you can learn here.
In french the word “chatte” (female cat) is used . But it appears to me that using “pussy” in english is deemed less vulgar than using the equivalent “chatte” in french.
And indeed, as a previous poster pointed out “conil” , or variants of it, used to designate a rabbit in french, and went out of use. But in french, “con” (cunt) essentially isn’t used anymore to refers to female genitalia, either. It became so commonly used as a general insult directed at people that its meaning essentially became “moron” (and it’s no way nearly as offensive as “cunt” is in english). The majority of people wouldn’t know it has anything to do with genitalia.
And thje joke about two kinds of rabbits, the ones you grab like this and the ones you grab like that would also work with pussies but i am not so sure you can grab a bear so easily. Maybe you would have to transform it to two kinds of bears the ones you can shoot with a gun and the ones you can shoot with your. . . personal weapon? 
Grimm’s Law, of course. It’s a textbook example.
Chuck is probably correct.
According to my Chambers, he suggests that it went like this:
Greek byrsa >Late Latin byrsa=hide >Medieval Latin bursa=purse >Old English(before 1000) purs=small bag for carrying money(perhaps influenced by Old English pusa =bag > purse about 1250 in English.
I must admit I have never heard that word before. However, when I looked it up in the dictionary they suggest that it probably comes from the way you try to get a cat’s attention (as if that would be possible) by calling “come here, pussy!” (cif the Swedish word kisse).
No self-respectijng man who took a wife during the 50s would ever use that vulgar term to refer to you know what. I don’t buy any theory that that word came from 50s husbands.