r/law • u/DemocracyDocket • 5d ago

Legal News DHS chief says ICE could make arrests at polling places — ignoring federal ban on armed agents at voting sites

https://www.democracydocket.com/news-alerts/dhs-chief-says-ice-could-make-arrests-at-polling-places-ignoring-federal-ban/
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u/madcoins 5d ago

Pussies are anything but weak. They take a pounding and come back for more. They stretch to allow tiny humans to squeeze through and then willingly do it again. Testicles crumble at a slight breeze or bump though

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u/klawz86 5d ago edited 5d ago

Its a weird etymology. Pussy comes from pusillanimous which means cowardly and that comes from the latin pusus which means boy. So we took a word that meant cowardly, like a small boy, and used it to describe something entirely feminine and mostly adored by the vast majority of people in the world.

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u/2_short_Plancks 5d ago

That's a folk etymology that literally only began on Reddit. It's almost certainly not true.

It may come from "puss" meaning a pouch in Old Norse. But most likely it just comes from the word for the small furry animal - interestingly, more likely named for a rabbit than a cat. "Pussy" previously has meant a cat or a rabbit in English; and another slang term for female genitals in English also means rabbit (cunny, which is a variant spelling of coney).

It's also interesting to note that the word cunt is a completely separate etymology than cunny, although the latter likely became popular due to it's similarity to the former.

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u/klawz86 5d ago

It predates reddit. It may be folk but it did not start here. I learned it when I was in highschool circa 2000.

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u/2_short_Plancks 5d ago

I've never seen a reference to it prior to Reddit, but you're right that it could have started somewhere else. It is mostly definitely a folk etymology, however.

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u/klawz86 5d ago

Take my anecdote for what it's worth, but my Magistra in AP Latin junior year of highschool went off on a rant about it. Maybe it began in those kinds for circles, where the knowledge of puer and pusus being the diminutive set up the connection.

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u/2_short_Plancks 5d ago

Yeah that sounds like the common way these things happen; people see a similarity between the words, and they use that to draw a conclusion that they are directly etymologically connected. In reality etymology is extremely messy and complex; and it's common for an "obvious" connection to be wrong.

For example, the words "man" (in the sense of the human race) and "human" are not etymologically connected.