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C*nt originally a term of endearment?

As far as I know, Gropecunt Lane in London was eventually renamed to Threadneedle Street.

So the Bank of England is in fact the Old Lady of Gropecunt Lane. Nothing new there then.

And yes, I've heard it used a term of endearment many times, often between me and my bro, for example.

And lots of nice middle class American girls frequently use it these days, mostly as a result of my good influences....

:twisted:
 
and i thought its original meaning was:

Object you screw on the bed, that does the housework!
 
What you do with your Hoover is entirely your affair, matey.

Anyway, to recap, c*nt was, until relatively recently, not nearly as offensive as blasphemy. As a word, Chaucer used to throw it around liberally. It's only in the last couple of hundred years that the focus of "profanity" has migrated from being offensive to God to being offensive to man, or in this case woman.

Last year's swearing is this year's slang, and next year's common usage. Language is fluid, and within a century something we (as a society, or significant sections thereof) say will probably become taboo. Look at the storm around Big Brother's (conjectured) racism: in 100 years, what Jade said could quite possibly cause people to faint. And the "c" word could well be a friendly greeting, once again (near enough.)
 
I seem to remember the director's commentary on The Tailor of Panama DVD mentioning this. The director has a little moan about it now being an offensive word.
 
rev_dino said:
As far as I know, Gropecunt Lane in London was eventually renamed to Threadneedle Street.
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Hense Terry Pratchetts 'Guild of Seamstresses'

From Wiki- There seem to be many Seamstresses in Ankh-Morpork, and yet bachelors or old widowers have difficulty when they try to find needlewomen who wield needles and threads to repair garments.
 
I have met people who have no problem at all with the word "cunt", but or mortally offended by "twat". Anyone else come across this?*

*As Forteans we're above making a comment on this accidental double entendre. Oops, I just did...
 
Never encountered that Sprout. In fact I had no idea twat was a rude word till I saw it spelled tw*t on this very board. And I'm a well brought up beak, went to convent school. :)
 
I thought it was the name of some sort of baby animal or fish. Salmon? Can't remember now.
 
I have to say I got very much told off for using 'twat' as an insult on another message board (although it was the largely american feminism group on Myspace). I've never really seen it used as a word for ladyparts in the UK, in fact I think the first time I ever saw it used like that was in a Stephen King novel.

Speaking of Cunt, my friends and I all understand it to mean 'cute little furry pink thing' and use it as a term of greeting and endearment. I love Inga Muscio's book ('Cunt; a declaration of Independance,') I may have mentioned it before. It's currently in a box (ho ho) in the attic, I'll have to remember to make an effort to dig it out to see if it can shed any more light. I wouldn't like to paraphrase because my memory is rubbish.

Someone mentioned earlier that they've found you can use any string of insults to someone without causing offense until you drop the C word. I've also found this, at the local working men's club; I was telling a friend about George Carlin's version of the 7 dirty words you can never say on television, and the barman's ears did not prick up until I reached 'cunt.' I was told if I used it again I'd be thrown out. It's a smelly club anyway.
 
I hardly ever swear. It doesn't come naturally to me, but I use the word "twat" all the time. It doesn't sound rude to me at all. The "C" word though (see, I can't even type it) makes me cringe.
 
mindalai said:
I hardly ever swear. It doesn't come naturally to me, but I use the word "twat" all the time. It doesn't sound rude to me at all. The "C" word though (see, I can't even type it) makes me cringe.
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I never used to like it, because, to me, it's a very hard-sounding word. But I prefer it to 'pussy,' which sounds sloppy and gross.

I remembered something from Inga Muscio's book; a reference to Kali Kunti. So was a word very much like 'cunt' used to describe goddesses?
 
emmbob said:
I never used to like it, because, to me, it's a very hard-sounding word. But I prefer it to 'pussy,' which sounds sloppy and gross.
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At the risk of de-railing this thread, I can't think of a nice word for, you know, that...area...
 
Unfortunately you're right, none of them are particularly fetching. Because genitals are supposed to be icky. I personally like to call mine a fanny. If you wished to know that.
 
emmbob said:
I personally like to call mine a fanny. If you wished to know that.
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I'll bear that in mind, just in case it ever comes up in conversation. :)
 
cheers :)

shall we let them get back on track now? :lol:

edit: I thought of another nice word: Yoni. Apparently it means 'sacred temple,' and is used in place of 'vagina' which means 'sheath for a sword.' Of course, this could be total hippy nonsense, but I quite like the word.
 
One of the best performances I've ever been to was the Vagina Monologues in Woking a few years back. Apart from being generally very funny, sad, and moving all in one show, it was fantastic to hear all the women in the auditorium being urged to join in with shouting "cunt" over and over again - it created quite a din in the end :lol: Although there were some people who clearly found it terribly distasteful.

Oh, and derailing slightly again, there's a film where several women are discussing how they refer to their... nether regions (I think it might be Go Fish or something like that). If I remember correctly, one of the favourites of that particular crowd was "honeypot" :shock: but they come up with all sorts of euphemisms.
 
". . . it was fantastic to hear all the women in the auditorium being urged to join in with shouting . . ."

. . . and ever-so-slightly puzzling to be following the bus as it took them back to their rest-home after the show. :shock:
 
Getting off topic again, but

rev_dino said:
As far as I know, Gropecunt Lane in London was eventually renamed to Threadneedle Street.
Click to expand...

Gainsborough had a low railway bridge, locally known as "ticklecock bridge", very popular with courting couples etc. it was near the old central station, the bridge has been knocked down now. I have no idea if it had a real name.

Prehaps we need a thread about this kind of thing?
 
RealPaZZa said:
Getting off topic again, but

rev_dino said:
As far as I know, Gropecunt Lane in London was eventually renamed to Threadneedle Street.
Click to expand...

Gainsborough had a low railway bridge, locally known as "ticklecock bridge", very popular with courting couples etc. it was near the old central station, the bridge has been knocked down now. I have no idea if it had a real name.

Prehaps we need a thread about this kind of thing?
Click to expand...

We've got one. Gropecunt Lane gets lots of mentions, even Ticklecock Bridge gets in there!
It's the 'Macabre Place Names' thread in General Forteana...

(Which I'm having problems linking to for some reason!)
 
evilsprout said:
I have met people who have no problem at all with the word "cunt", but or mortally offended by "twat". Anyone else come across this?*

*As Forteans we're above making a comment on this accidental double entendre. Oops, I just did...
Click to expand...
My lil' sis has a mouth like a cess pit, but hates the use of the word twat. A friend from Glasgow used it as a term of endearment for her young son, much to the consternation of the posh birds on the Wirral...
 
Macabre Place Names:

www.forteantimes.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2462

-----------
gncxx said:
Isn't a twat something a nun wears?
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mindalai said:
I thought it was the name of some sort of baby animal or fish. Salmon? Can't remember now.
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The mighty Wikipedia has some great twat-related info that also address this:

Robert Browning famously misused the term in his 1841 poem "Pippa Passes", believing it to be an item of nun's clothing:

Then owls and bats
Cowls and twats
Monks and nuns in a cloister's moods
Adjourn to the oak-stump pantry
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Its meaning was in reality the same then as now, Browning's misconception probably having arisen from a line in a 1660 satirical poem, Vanity of Vanities:

They talk't of his having a Cardinalls Hat
They'd send him as soon an Old Nuns Twat
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Click to expand...

There is an urban legend that "twat" is a term for a pregnant goldfish.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twat

Now I say twat (short a rhymes with bat) but I have heard it pronounced twot on TV (from the US) with the implication that it was closer to meaning the same as we'd say cunt.

Here it is fairly tame - twatting about, getting twatted, twatface, etc.
 
They also have an impressive Cunt entry:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cunt

So my being a smarty pants looked up minge and got a suprise (Not Safe For Work):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minge

What impressed me was somewhere someone has, for the betterment of mankind, got her lady parts photographed for use there (its the copyright free way of doing it) which is a strange kind of immortality. "And look Timmy there are your grannies most private parts and no she didn't have an arrow saying anus pointing at her bott hole".

Being a curious sort I did wonder if other people had achieved immortaility in similar ways and so they have (again not safe for anyone):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anus#Health

But I think they ar pushing things rather on the penis entry:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penis#Erection
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penis#Normal_variations
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penis#Alte ... _genitalia

Sorry - as you were.

Fanny you say?
 
Mighty_Emperor said:
Macabre Place Names:

www.forteantimes.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2462
Click to expand...

I coulda done that! :roll: I wanted to do a fancy 'click here' one (which didn't seem to work for some reason!) :D


I'm a bit worried about you Emps. It must be very hard for you looking at all those websites, in the wee small hours, all for our enlightenment of course... ;) :p
 
Re: Wiki article--the Talk page is rather interesting. Amazing how many people wrote in to complain "Take this filth off the page" and even one tw*t ;) who said the pics were illegal. (Um, NO)
 
I thought I had better check out the elephant penis on Wikipedia*.

I suspect the photograph really shows an elephant bitch giving birth. :shock:


*Just in case I was questioned about it during the week. Not being at all close to the PM, this is highly unlikely. And I am plain Mr. still! :(
 
I don't know on that Safari thing (which looked like it might be interesting but wasn't) they stumbld upon (not "came across" as I first wrote) an elephant whose johnson was virtually dragging on the ground in a similar manner to the one depicted on Wikipedia. Of course it might be giving birth I suppose but they really are that big.

gyrtrash said:
Mighty_Emperor said:
Macabre Place Names:

www.forteantimes.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2462
Click to expand...

I coulda done that! :roll: I wanted to do a fancy 'click here' one (which didn't seem to work for some reason!) :D
Click to expand...

Thusly

gyrtrash said:
I'm a bit worried about you Emps. It must be very hard for you looking at all those websites, in the wee small hours, all for our enlightenment of course... ;) :p
Click to expand...

Its a dirty job.... and my reputation is sufficiently sullied that it may as well be me doing it ;)

I sometimes get little thoughts like that trapped in my head and have to follow it through to whatever strange conclusion it leads to.[/url]
 
Reading this thread and other words used for the female genitals made me think about the fuss caused a few years back when Ali G started using the word "punani", which caused an inevitable backlash from Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells.

This in turn caused some black women to declare that they were "taking their word back", incensed that Disgusted and Co were trying to stifle their "culture", so helpfully highlighted by Sacha Baron Cohen.

The idea that Ali G was a character created to take the piss out of people pretending to be something they are not obviously went way over their heads, they saw him as their champion. When it was revealed that the use of the word "punani" by Ali G wasn't a slang term for female genitalia, in common usage in the Afro-Caribbean community, it just sounded good, they got all uppity and declared they had used the term all their lives. Well, they thought they had, they weren't actually 100% sure.

So, 2 sets of people get het up over interpretations of a word that quite possibly wasn't even used previously, either way.

Can anyone recall hearing the word "punani" before Ali G made it famous? I think it's one of those words that you think have been around forever, but when you think about it, not so. "Pussy" and "Poontang", certainly, but not "punani".

As far as I remember, the closest translation of "punani" came from two words in old Hawaiian - "pua" meaning heavenly, and "nani" meaning flower, so, neither rude nor literal.
 
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