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Etymology
 silly pussy etymology of




From: Bruce.Tindall@launchpad.unc.edu (Bruce Tindall)
Subject: Silly Pussy

In article <1993Feb22.231046.4729@unislc.uucp> dw@unislc.uucp (Dan Wright) writes: >Paul Wallich at Trivializers R Us wrote:
>: on. Then of course, "silly" used to mean "saintly" so go figure.

Not according to the OED. They've got pitiable, defenceless, weak, insignificant, ignorant, lowly, feeble-minded, foolish, (some of which are obsolete), but not saintly. However, they could be missing a reference, I suppose, as the term "God's Fool" has, I believe, been applied to some saints. Paul may be on to something. Anyone care to pursue it (for food)?

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.

And using this post as evidence, Terry, let's have a couple of new lines in the FAQ, OK?
T. Bruce *has* plugged books not written by his family. Fb. He has plugged such books other than the Oxford English Dictionary.

Bruce "would you buy a used tome from this man" Tindall


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