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

----- Original Message -----

From: Mark Odegard

To: cybalist@egroups.com

Sent: Wednesday, June 21, 2000 9:46 PM

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

Mark wrote:

... And yes, we have PIE *putos 'anus' 'vulva'. I don't know if this word is ancestral to the Romance one.

 

It's a very disPUTable reconstruction. I'd accept *pux-t- 'stink, rot', *pux-s- 'fester, suppurate; pus' instead. Anyway, puto, puta, French putaine, Italian putto (as in baroque paintings), etc. go back to Proto-Romance *put-, cf. Latin putus, a hapax variant of pusus 'boy', possibly derived from *p(a)u- 'small' (cf. paucus, paulus, Greek pauros, pais '(m.) boy; (f.) girl' < *paw-id-s). Semantic pejoration like 'girl' > 'prostitute' is a very common process.

 

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.

 

*kax- also underlies Welsh câr 'friend', Skt. ka:ma- 'love, desire' (as in Kama Sutra). The root *wen- (as in Skt. vanati, *wen-os- > Venus, Old English wine 'friend') had a similar meaning. A PIE term for 'prostitute' would not be likely to have survived, given the plethora of euphemistic or not-so-euphemistic synonymy in this area (e.g. Latin prostituere < *pro-statuere means 'stand in a public place'; the primary meaning of scortum 'strumpet, concubine' was 'skin, hide'; the really obscene Latin term for a whore was cunnus = 'c***' < *kusnos, cf. Greek kusthos, same meaning). Greek porne: may in fact be related to perne:mi 'sell' (Greek prostitutes were often girls sold and bought as slaves).

 

Piotr