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From: alderson@netcom16.netcom.com (Richard M. Alderson III)
Subject: Re: etymology question (note: slang, may be offensive to some...)
In-Reply-To: canton@ontology.com's message of Sun, 16 Mar 1997 16:42:13 -0600
Message-ID: <ALDERSON.97Mar17120612@netcom16.netcom.com>
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References: <canton-1603971642130001@hydra1.ontology.com>
Date: Mon, 17 Mar 1997 20:06:11 GMT
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In article <canton-1603971642130001@hydra1.ontology.com> canton@ontology.com
(canton) writes:

>I've heard two rumors, that

>#1: "Cunt" was originally a medical term synominous with vagina

>#2: "Cunt" was derived from the name of an ancient fertility godess, and the
>Catholic church essentially demonized the word (in the same spirit of
>destroying pagan holidays by arranging christian holidays on the same date,
>etc.)

  slang \'slan\ n [origin unknown]  1 : language peculiar to a particular group
  : as  a : ARGOT  b : JARGON  2 : an informal nonstandard vocabulary composed 
  typically of coinages, arbitrarily changed words, and extravagant, forced, or
  facetious figures of speech -- SYN see DIALECT -- slang adj -- slang.i.ly 

_cunt_ is *not* slang, but rather a fairly old word in English.  Its form makes
it likely to be a borrowing from French _con_ < Latin _cunnus_; cf. Attic Greek
_kustho's_.  Were it a Germanic word, the expected initial in Latin and Greek
would be *g; given the Latin and Greek forms, a Germanic etymon would have to
start with *h.

Both the Latin and Greek can be derived as adjective formations from a stem
*kewdh-, the Latin from *kudh-no- and the Greek from *kudh-to-.

Both sources you report have the same feel to them as those which derive _fuck_
from one of a number of phrases, none germane to its etymology.
-- 
Rich Alderson   You know the sort of thing that you can find in any dictionary
                of a strange language, and which so excites the amateur philo-
                logists, itching to derive one tongue from another that they
                know better: a word that is nearly the same in form and meaning
                as the corresponding word in English, or Latin, or Hebrew, or
                what not.
                                                --J. R. R. Tolkien,
alderson@netcom.com                               _The Notion Club Papers_
