# You say vagina, I say vu-vulva **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [December 4, 2008, 4:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-say-vagina-i-say-vu-vulva/475634 "2008-12-04T04:39:36Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![Muffin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/muffin/32/4341_2.png) [@Muffin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Muffin)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2008, 3:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-say-vagina-i-say-vu-vulva/475634/101 "2008-12-05T15:44:18Z")
> [@Hazle\_Weatherfield](#): > > But, like it or not, “vagina” seems to be the catchall term these days. A vagina that is a catchall – now that’s oogy. ---
**Author:** ![Susie\_Derkins](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e47774/32.png) [@Susie\_Derkins](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Susie_Derkins)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2008, 8:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-say-vagina-i-say-vu-vulva/475634/102 "2008-12-05T20:07:23Z")
> [@Muffin](#): > > A vagina that is a catchall – now that’s oogy. But I’d never lose my car keys again! ---
**Author:** ![ShibbOleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/848f3c/32.png) [@ShibbOleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ShibbOleth)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2008, 8:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-say-vagina-i-say-vu-vulva/475634/103 "2008-12-05T20:42:41Z")
> [@Susie\_Derkins](#): > > But I’d never lose my car keys again! You’ve never lost your keys in your purse? ---
**Author:** ![Wile\_E](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/c37758/32.png) [@Wile\_E](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wile_E)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2008, 9:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-say-vagina-i-say-vu-vulva/475634/104 "2008-12-05T21:41:48Z")
[QUOTE=me] I usually use the word vulva, especially at work but then the client corrects me and says vagina, but I continue to call it the vulva. They usually relent when the doctor comes in and refers to it as a vulva but they probably still go tell their friends that the **vet tech** doesn’t know the proper name for their **dog** ’s hoo-ha. [/QUOTE] > [@BellRungBookShut-CandleSnuffed](#): > > … > Now this I can get behind. It’s a medical setting, you’re talking about one specific thing and using the clinical terminology for it. Good for you for fighting ignorance, even if the clods probably resent you when the **MD** uses the correct term for it. > … DVM, actually. It’s not really a big deal but there were a couple clues in my post. 😉 Re: The Seinfeld episode. Wasn’t Brenda Strong aka Mary Alice of _Desperate Housewives_ the one who played Dolores/Mulva? ---
**Author:** ![descamisado](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e480ec/32.png) [@descamisado](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/descamisado)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2008, 9:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-say-vagina-i-say-vu-vulva/475634/105 "2008-12-05T21:45:18Z")
> [@Muffin](#): > > A vagina that is a catchall – now that’s oogy. Why does, in this sentence, that last word keep reading as _orgy_? ---
**Author:** ![interface2x](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c0e974/32.png) [@interface2x](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/interface2x)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2008, 12:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-say-vagina-i-say-vu-vulva/475634/106 "2008-12-06T00:21:30Z")
> [@Wile\_E](#): > > Re: The Seinfeld episode. > Wasn’t Brenda Strong aka Mary Alice of _Desperate Housewives_ the one who played Dolores/Mulva? Nope - she played Sue Ellen Mischke. Delores was played by [Susan Walters](http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0910376/). ---
**Author:** ![malkavia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/malkavia/32/5621_2.png) [@malkavia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/malkavia)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2008, 12:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-say-vagina-i-say-vu-vulva/475634/107 "2008-12-06T00:46:39Z")
> [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](#): > > Seriously, “vagina” has come into popular use as a catch-all word for the whole assembly. I don’t know about anyone else but going forward, I’ll be referring to mine as “the whole assembly”. Thanks, Dio. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![BellRungBookShut-CandleSnuffed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/bcef8e/32.png) [@BellRungBookShut-CandleSnuffed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BellRungBookShut-CandleSnuffed)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2008, 1:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-say-vagina-i-say-vu-vulva/475634/108 "2008-12-06T01:57:02Z")
> [@Wile\_E](#): > > DVM, actually. It’s not really a big deal but there were a couple clues in my post. 😉 Grr, I hate you for pointing out my ignorance. 😉 Yeah, I temporarily forgot about other medical degrees. I didn’t sleep much. ---
**Author:** ![Wile\_E](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/c37758/32.png) [@Wile\_E](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wile_E)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2008, 2:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-say-vagina-i-say-vu-vulva/475634/109 "2008-12-06T02:44:54Z")
> [@interface2x](#): > > Nope - she played Sue Ellen Mischke. Delores was played by [Susan Walters](http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0910376/). Oh well. I guess I could have just looked it up on IMDB but I didn’t feel like expending that much energy. ---
**Author:** ![Fish\_Nya](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/8edcca/32.png) [@Fish\_Nya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fish_Nya)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2008, 9:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-say-vagina-i-say-vu-vulva/475634/110 "2008-12-06T09:46:42Z")
We only had a male dog for much of my younger childhood so I remember yelling “Trooper keeps licking his dinker!” many times. I’m not quite sure how my family settled on ‘dinker’ but I am sure it morphed from dick. Now that we have a female dog I get to say “Bailey stop licking your cooch on the bed” and of course “Buddha, get your nose out of Bailey’s cooch.” I have, on occasion, slipped and said ‘dog dick’ and ‘cunt’. Another strange hold-over in my family is the word “showtime”. It was the word that somehow became the word that meant ‘time to shit’ for our bloodhound. He was quite good at following the command while on walks, too. We use the word with all of our dogs now, even though we never trained them. So we just wander the streets yelling “Showtime! It’s freezing- fucking showtime already!” Might be why the neighbors avoid us. ---
**Author:** ![Unauthorized\_Cinnamon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/bc8723/32.png) [@Unauthorized\_Cinnamon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Unauthorized_Cinnamon)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2008, 12:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-say-vagina-i-say-vu-vulva/475634/111 "2008-12-06T12:45:50Z")
You all may be fine using vagina as a general term for the whole area, but I have two problems with that, aside from just “use the right word damn it”: 1. It is much more useful to know the names of the individual parts if you ever have a problem you need to describe to a doctor. (I also think it would help kids describe what happened if someone messed with them - at least in some states, penetration makes a completely different crime.) 2. It’s all fine and dandy to embrace the popular usage, until, knowing the correct technical definitions, you hear someone talk about shaving their vagina, and you have to curl up holding your crotch and trying to disimagine a razor blade up there. ---
**Author:** ![sailor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a587f6/32.png) [@sailor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sailor)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2008, 2:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-say-vagina-i-say-vu-vulva/475634/112 "2008-12-06T14:31:12Z")
You say vagina, I say I’d rather do it in the mouth. ---
**Author:** ![Enola\_Gay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/3ab097/32.png) [@Enola\_Gay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Enola_Gay)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2008, 3:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-say-vagina-i-say-vu-vulva/475634/113 "2008-12-06T15:54:32Z")
> [@BellRungBookShut-CandleSnuffed](#): > > See, the uterus thing I can see, because you’re teaching a kid a medical term early on, and clearing up any confusion about why the baby is in the same place as your salad ends up. Not that you would have become one of them, but this is probably the reason we have people on the internet asking if they can get pragnat from giving a blowjob. > > But the others? They’re just accepted slang. I personally don’t like “peepee” or “tinkle,” and would have encouraged “pee,” but each to his own. Did she allow any slang, or even euphemisms? Could you say that Uncle Charlie passed on, or did you have to say he achieved a state of mortem (mortus?) due to his heart stopping and his brain not receiving the oxygen necessary from his blood? There’s correct, and then there’s pedantic. I should have mentioned that both parents were MDs. So yeah, Uncle Charlie arrested after an acute myocardial infarction caused by an occlusion in his left anterior decending coronary artery. Correct and pedantic. ---
**Author:** ![obfusciatrist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/4af34b/32.png) [@obfusciatrist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/obfusciatrist)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2008, 4:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-say-vagina-i-say-vu-vulva/475634/114 "2008-12-06T16:04:00Z")
Synecdoche. ---
**Author:** ![InterestedObserver](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/838e76/32.png) [@InterestedObserver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/InterestedObserver)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2008, 12:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-say-vagina-i-say-vu-vulva/475634/115 "2008-12-08T00:39:08Z")
I’m with the op on this one…just a pet peeve of mine. Not only is it inaccurate, I dislike the word itself, even when used correctly. We’ve usually used the term yoni with my daughter to label the entire area, and used “accurate” terms for the different parts as needed. I feel it’s important that she grow up knowing that she has more than just a “vagina”. As for the proper pronounciation of clitoris, I always leaned toward CLIT-or-us, while being aware that clit-OR-us was also widely used. (as it was in that Seinfeld episode…and the deal was he had forgotten her name and she finally busted him when he kept avoiding using her name. He already had her clue that it rhymed with a part of the female anatomy, but only got it after she’d left in a huff. And after several amusing guesses. The word “clitoris” was never uttered in the episode, and it took me a moment to get it, since I pronounce it differently.) There was an episode of Just Shoot Me where Nina, for some reason I can’t recall, says, “I always thought it was pronounced CLIT-or-us?” 😕 Me too, Nina. 😃 But I just use the term “clit” in “real life” situations anyway. And other terms for the rest of it. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![OpalCat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/8edcca/32.png) [@OpalCat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OpalCat)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2008, 1:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-say-vagina-i-say-vu-vulva/475634/116 "2008-12-08T01:40:15Z")
> [@InterestedObserver](#): > > (as it was in that Seinfeld episode…and the deal was he had forgotten her name and she finally busted him when he kept avoiding using her name. He already had her clue that it rhymed with a part of the female anatomy, but only got it after she’d left in a huff. And after several amusing guesses. The word “clitoris” was never uttered in the episode, and it took me a moment to get it, since I pronounce it differently.) You’re aware that this episode has been discussed at length in the thread, right? Just asking because your wording sounded like you were explaining it to someone who hadn’t heard of it. ---
**Author:** ![panamajack](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/47e85d/32.png) [@panamajack](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/panamajack)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2008, 2:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-say-vagina-i-say-vu-vulva/475634/117 "2008-12-08T02:10:36Z")
> [@obfusciatrist](#): > > Synecdoche. Or _metonymy_, which is more accurate if you’re talking about just the visible portion. [for those playing at home : synecdoche - the part standing for the whole; metonymy - the name of one part used for an adjunct part or the whole.] But catch-all seems more appropriate. Also, ‘disinvaginate’ doesn’t exactly mean what it appears to mean. ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Haddock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ce73a5/32.png) [@Captain\_Haddock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Haddock)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2008, 4:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-say-vagina-i-say-vu-vulva/475634/118 "2008-12-08T04:12:59Z")
I suppose it depends which one rolls off the tongue more easily. 😃 I can see the use in maintaining the technical meaning of the word vagina in a medical context, but examples of word generalisation are ultimately part of language evolution. I can’t really identify with people who feel the need to fight it a la King Canute. After all language pedants have been letting things slide since the word ‘pedant’ expanded from its initial meaning (OED: 1. A teacher, a schoolmaster, a tutor. In early use also: an attendant charged with the daily supervision of a child). > [@Jenaroph](#): > > I want to correct this before you or any other non-Yank come over here and accidentally embarrass the crap out of yourself. Conversely Americans visiting the UK may wish to avoid using the word ‘fanny’, which in British English refers the female genitals, and probably why you won’t find [fannie flaps](http://www.jenackscanvas.com/fannyflaps.html) marketed over here. (SFW) ---
**Author:** ![OpalCat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/8edcca/32.png) [@OpalCat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OpalCat)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2008, 4:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-say-vagina-i-say-vu-vulva/475634/119 "2008-12-08T04:37:26Z")
I am not a huge fan of the word “vagina” but I think the word “vulva” is repulsive. I don’t know why, but it’s just one of those words that sounds very gross to me. Like phlegm. ---
**Author:** ![Biffy\_the\_Elephant\_Shrew](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e47c2d/32.png) [@Biffy\_the\_Elephant\_Shrew](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Biffy_the_Elephant_Shrew)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2008, 5:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-say-vagina-i-say-vu-vulva/475634/120 "2008-12-08T05:13:18Z")
> [@panamajack](#): > > [for those playing at home : synecdoche - the part standing for the whole; metonymy - the name of one part used for an adjunct part or the whole.] What, then, is the term for a word used to describe the whole which properly refers to the hole? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-say-vagina-i-say-vu-vulva/475634.md?page=5) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-say-vagina-i-say-vu-vulva/475634.md?page=7)