Re: [TIED] Ahem....somewhat perturbed.....

From: Mark Odegard
Message: 2721
Date: 2000-06-21

 
some poor uneducated man remarked that Putin means whore and insulted a simple play in Latin

In New York City Street-Spanish, puto is an extremely derogatory epithet, 'male whore', 'male slut', much stronger in meaning that the relatively innocuous puta. It seems to be a favorite term in Spanish-speaking gay circles, but it is not confined just to gay circles. It's rather analogous to the c-word used to describe certain kinds of women; this is regarded as the 'most obscene' word in English.
 
'Putin' looks like a Franco-Spanish diminutive, 'little puto'. Mr. Putin's last name is rather like the late Mr. Takeshita's last name  (the former Japanese Prime Minister). It's hard to avoid the smutty giggles whenever you see the name in print.
 
And yes, we have PIE *putos 'anus' 'vulva'. I don't know if this word is ancestral to the Romance one.
 
And seeing if we can move this further on-topic, I wonder if other PIE word for this semantic area are reconstructable. Patriarchial or not, the world's oldest profession has to have been well-known to the PIE-speakers. Greek porna/pornos comes from *per 'to sell, to traffic', according to AHD3. English 'whore' derives from *ka, the same root that also gives us the Latin-derived 'charity'.  The root *bhel has all sorts of associations, from bull to phallus.
 
Mark.