# How did "pussy" get its current connotation? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [July 6, 2003, 7:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-pussy-get-its-current-connotation/186537 "2003-07-06T07:59:31Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 14\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Muad\_Dib](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/35a633/32.png) [@Muad\_Dib](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Muad_Dib)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2003, 7:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-pussy-get-its-current-connotation/186537/1 "2003-07-06T07:59:31Z")
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? ---
**Author:** ![Ice\_Wolf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/dfb087/32.png) [@Ice\_Wolf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ice_Wolf)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2003, 8:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-pussy-get-its-current-connotation/186537/2 "2003-07-06T08:10:51Z")
[According to Phrase Finder forum](http://phrases.shu.ac.uk/bulletin_board/8/messages/1122.html), it goes back a fair way. > [@](#): > > "Random House does include the slang (vulgar) definition for > “pussy” with the etymology: [1875-80; perh. = vulva, akin to LG puse = vulva, OE pusa = bag; see PURSE]. ---
**Author:** ![Ice\_Wolf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/dfb087/32.png) [@Ice\_Wolf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ice_Wolf)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2003, 8:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-pussy-get-its-current-connotation/186537/3 "2003-07-06T08:16:18Z")
Well, what I just posted there might be a UL, darn it! :smack: From [here:](http://www.urbanlegends.com/language/etymology/silly_pussy_etymology_of.html) > [@](#): > > Dan continues: > \>“Purse” and “pussy” have the same root. That’s one of my favorites. > Again, not according to the OED. They give an etymology of “purse” that relates it to “bourse” (as in the French for stock market) but with a caveat that they’re not sure how the b became a p. In any case, they give it a Romance Languages genealogy, whereas pussy is found to have cognates in Germanic languages as a word for cat, but no etymology is given. Nor is there any explanation for how it came to mean female genitalia. OED gives a 1664 quotation in which it may or may not have that meaning; the next oldest is from 1879. There’s a 1583 quotation in which “pussy” obviously means “woman”, i.e., a person, not only one part of her anatomy, so maybe by synecdoche (the rest of you can look it up when you get home) it came to mean genitalia? That last speculation is mine, not the OED’s. ---
**Author:** ![istara](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/e79b87/32.png) [@istara](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/istara)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2003, 9:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-pussy-get-its-current-connotation/186537/4 "2003-07-06T09:45:35Z")
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.” ---
**Author:** ![samclem](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a9a28c/32.png) [@samclem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/samclem)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2003, 1:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-pussy-get-its-current-connotation/186537/5 "2003-07-06T13:52:34Z")
From a [Thread](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=181739&highlight=pussy) last month about this where I replied: > [@](#): > > Puss starts off as a “conventional” name for a cat, in print from before 1530. It is most likely a sound that was used to call a cat–i.e. “here, puss, puss!” > > It appears as a name for a cat in other Germanic languages, pus and pus-katte in Low German, puse in Norwegian, poes in Dutch. > > It shows up in 1726 as pussy , diminutive of puss. It shows up even earlier (1605) referring to Dick Whitington and his “pusse.” > > The use of “pussycat” appears in print in 1805 in a nursery rhyme–“pussycat, pussycat, where have you been.” No doubt it was a common useage well-before that time. > > It probably was turned into pussycat merely to make nursery rhymes flow more smoothly. Sing-songy kind of thing. > > My info is from the OED and Chambers. _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. ---
**Author:** ![sailor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a587f6/32.png) [@sailor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sailor)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2003, 2:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-pussy-get-its-current-connotation/186537/6 "2003-07-06T14:05:30Z")
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). ---
**Author:** ![sarcophilus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f4b2a3/32.png) [@sarcophilus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sarcophilus)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2003, 5:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-pussy-get-its-current-connotation/186537/7 "2003-07-06T17:08:48Z")
The Macquarie Dictionary aspect quote: Perhaps Swedish dialectal ‘pusa’, akin to Icelandic ‘puss’ meaning Mare’s vulva ---
**Author:** ![Mort\_Furd](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/8e8cbc/32.png) [@Mort\_Furd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mort_Furd)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2003, 6:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-pussy-get-its-current-connotation/186537/8 "2003-07-06T18:05:50Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by sailor \* > 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 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. ---
**Author:** ![clairobscur](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/839c29/32.png) [@clairobscur](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/clairobscur)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2003, 6:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-pussy-get-its-current-connotation/186537/9 "2003-07-06T18:29:02Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Mort Furd \* > \*\*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. ---
**Author:** ![sailor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a587f6/32.png) [@sailor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sailor)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2003, 6:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-pussy-get-its-current-connotation/186537/10 "2003-07-06T18:40:42Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Mort Furd \* > And in German, you get the same joke but with “rabbit” replaced by “bear.” 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? 😉 ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2003, 8:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-pussy-get-its-current-connotation/186537/11 "2003-07-06T20:08:55Z")
> [@](#): > > Again, not according to the OED. They give an etymology of “purse” that relates it to “bourse” (as in the French for stock market) but with a caveat that they’re not sure how the b became a p. Grimm’s Law, of course. It’s a textbook example. ---
**Author:** ![samclem](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a9a28c/32.png) [@samclem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/samclem)\ **Post date:** [July 7, 2003, 1:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-pussy-get-its-current-connotation/186537/12 "2003-07-07T01:35:11Z")
**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. ---
**Author:** ![Floater](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/dc4da7/32.png) [@Floater](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Floater)\ **Post date:** [July 7, 2003, 2:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-pussy-get-its-current-connotation/186537/13 "2003-07-07T14:50:03Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by sarcophilus \* > The Macquarie Dictionary aspect > quote: > > Perhaps Swedish dialectal ‘pusa’, akin to Icelandic ‘puss’ meaning Mare’s vulva 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_). ---
**Author:** ![zuma](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/e9c0ed/32.png) [@zuma](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zuma)\ **Post date:** [July 7, 2003, 3:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-pussy-get-its-current-connotation/186537/14 "2003-07-07T15:10:21Z")
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.