At 10:31:12 PM on Saturday, June 30, 2007, Rick McCallister
wrote:
> Good, but puss also means "face" in English
> and of course "vulva", which is shared by Spanish
> mico, but this is a secondary meaning
> Is the meaning "face", as in "sourpuss", somehow from
> the animal or is a homonym?
According to the OED, it's from Irish <pus> 'lip, mouth',
generally used in a contemptuous sense. (The derivation is
supported by the distribution, chiefly Irish and U.S.) For
Early Irish the DIL has <pus> 'a lip', generally used in a
contemptuous sense; this appears to be a variant of EIr
<bus> 'a lip'. For Sc.Gael. Dwelly has both but takes <pus>
to be a variant of <bus>. Matasovic derives the word from
PCelt. *bussu- 'lip' and adduces:
Old Irish: bus
Middle Welsh: gwe-fus
Middle Breton: gweuz
Cornish: gueus gl. labia
Gaulish: Bussu-maros [PN]
He adds a note:
OIr. <bus> is not well attested (it belongs to the poetic
language, <bérla na filed>). Its stem and gender are
unknown. Meid 2005: 129 adduces also Gaul. <Bussu-gnata>
from Pannonia, and assumes the meaning 'kiss' for the
element <bussu->.
Brian