Latin profanity is the profane, indecent, or impolite vocabulary of Latin, and its uses. Words deemed profane were described as obsc(a)ena (obscene, lewd, unfit for public use), or improba (improper, in poor taste, undignified). Profanities occurred rarely in classical Latin, limited to satirical works and commentaries on word usage, but they could be found in Vulgar Latin (a phrase which means "the language spoken by the common people").
Since profanities are informal and more often spoken than committed to paper, it is worthwhile to note several written sources of Latin profanity:
- The satirical poets, especially Catullus and Martial, use the words in preserved literary works. Horace also used them in his earlier poems. The anonymous Priapeia is another important literary source.
- The orator and lawyer Cicero's Epistulae ad Familiares ("Letters to My Friends") confirm the "profane" or "obscene" status of many Latin words.
- Medical, especially veterinary texts using certain anatomical words that, outside of their technical context, would have been considered profane.
- Graffiti from the Roman period, scrawled notably on the walls of Pompeii and Herculaneum.
Video Latin profanity
Mentula and verpa
Mentula is the basic Latin word for penis. Its status as a basic obscenity is confirmed by the Priapeia 29, in which mentula and cunnus are given as ideal examples of obscene words:
- Obscenis, peream, Priape, si non
uti me pudet improbisque verbis
sed cum tu posito deus pudore
ostendas mihi coleos patentes
cum cunno mihi mentula est vocanda- ("I'd rather die than use obscene and improper words; but when you, Priapus, as a god, appear with your testes hanging out, it is appropriate for me to speak of cunts and cocks.")
Verpa is also a basic Latin obscenity for "penis". It appears less frequently in Classical Latin, but it does appear in Catullus 47:
- vos Veraniolo meo et Fabullo
verpus praeposuit Priapus ille?- ("Did that dick, that Priapus, prefer you to my dear Veraniolus and Fabullus?")
Verpus, adjective and noun, referred to a man whose glans was exposed, either by an erection or by circumcision; thus Juvenal has
- Quaesitum ad fontem solos deducere verpos
- ("To guide only the circumcised [i.e. Jews] to the fountain that they seek").
Etymology
The exact etymology of mentula is somewhat obscure, although outwardly it would appear to be a diminutive of m?ns, gen. mentis, the "mind" (i.e.; "the little mind"). Mentum is the chin. Cicero's letter 9:22 ad Familiares relates it to menta, a spearmint stalk. Tucker's Etymological Dictionary of Latin relates it to ?min?re, "to project outwards", and m?ns, "a mountain", all of which suggest an Indo-European *men-.
Verpa probably relates to something "thrust" or "thrown"; compare Dutch werpen, German werfen, Danish verfe, Icelandic varpa, Lithuanian varpa, and Old English weorpan (the root of English warp), all meaning "to throw".
Usage
Mentula frequently appears in the poetry of Catullus. Catullus uses Mentula as a nickname for Mamurra, and uses it as an ordinary name, as in his epigram 105:
- Mentula conatur Pipleium scandere montem:
Musae furcillis praecipitem eiciunt.- ("That prick tries to climb the Pipleian mount (of poetry); the Muses drive him out with pitchforks.")
Synonyms and metaphors
The Latin word p?nis itself originally meant "tail". Cicero's ad Familiares, 9.22, observes that p?nis originally was an innocuous word, but that the meaning of male sexual organ had become primary by his day. Once it acquired its sexual sense, this sense tarred the word and made it unusable for anything other than the sexual sense; thus p?nis became the standard medical and scientific jargon word.
The obscure word s?pi? (gen. s?pi?nis) seemed to mean a sexualized caricature with an abnormally large penis, such as the Romans were known to draw. It appears in Catullus 37: frontem tabernae sopionibus scribam ("I will draw sopios on the front of the tavern") and in graffiti from Pompeii: ut merdas edatis, qui scripseras sopionis ("whoever drew sopios, let him eat shit!'") The grammarian Sacerdos preserves a quotation about Pompey, that says quem non pudet et rubet, non est homo, sed sopio ("whoever is not ashamed, and does not blush, is not a man, but a sopio.") S?pi? would appear to describe drawings such as that of the god Mercury in the illustration.
The word pipinna seems to have been children's slang for the penis; compare English pee-pee. It appears in Martial 11.71:
- Drauci Natta sui vorat pipinnam,
collatus cui gallus est Priapus.- ("Natta sucks the pee-pee of his athlete. Compared to him, Priapus is a eunuch.")
The verb arrig?, arrigere meant "to have an erection". Suetonius's Lives of the Twelve Caesars, Augustus 69, contains the line:
- An refert, ubi et in qua arrigas?
- ("Does it make any difference to me who made you erect, or when?")
In the Romance languages
Mentula has evolved into Sicilian and Italian minchia and South Sardinian minca. Minga also exists in Spanish. Verpa is preserved in some Romance dialects, usually with another meaning; verpile is a sort of stirrup and spur in a Calabrian dialect, possibly named for its shape. Most Romance languages have adopted metaphorical euphemisms as the chief words for the penis; as in Spanish, Portuguese and Italian verga, obscene for penis, and in Romanian varg? (although pul? is far more common), and in Catalan and French verge, from Latin virga, "staff".
Maps Latin profanity
C?le?: the testes
The basic word for the testicles in Latin was c?le? (singular: c?leus). It had an alternative, consonant-stem form c?le?n?s (singular: c?le?), in later Latin sometimes culi?, culi?n?s, that is sparsely attested in Classical Latin; this, however, is the productive word in Romance.
Etymology
The etymology of c?le? is obscure. Tucker, without explanation, gives *qogh-sle?-os (*kwogh-sley-os?), and relates it to cohum, an obscure word for "yoke".
Usage
C?le? does not appear to have been offensive to the degree that words like mentula or futu? were. Cicero's letters refer to the honesti colei Lanuvini; the chaste Lanuvian testes, which may have been a foodstuff, or perhaps wine in a wineskin; his description of them as honesti indicates that the word was acceptable in "decent" company.
On the other hand, a Pompeian graffiti quotes what may have been a folk saying: seni supino colei culum tegunt: "when an old man lies down, his testicles cover his arsehole." This may have been a proverb, and constitutes ribald humour; it does not demonstrate that the word was considered particularly obscene.
Synonyms and metaphors
The primary decent word in Latin for c?le? was test?s (sing. testis). This word may have derived (although the etymology is uncertain) from the plain Latin for "witnesses" (as in English attest, testify, testament and testimony); a man swore an oath upon what he held dearest; or, his testes were witnesses to his virility. Cicero's letter again says "testes" verbum honestissimum in iudicio, alio loco non nimis. ("In a court of law, witnesses is a quite decent word; not so elsewhere.") The diminutive testicul? was entirely confined to the anatomical sense, and supplied the English word testes and testicular, as well as its Romance equivalents.
In the Romance languages
C?le?n?s is productive in most of the Romance languages: cf. Italian coglioni, French couilles, couillons; Portuguese colhões, Galician collóns, collois, collós, Catalan collons, Sardinian cozzones, Romanian coi, coaie, Spanish cojones (now a loanword in English).
Cunnus: the vulva
Cunnus was the basic Latin word for the vulva. The Priapeia mention it in connection with mentula, above. Despite its similarity to "cunt", the Oxford English Dictionary cautions that the two words may have developed from different roots.
Etymology
Cunnus has a distinguished Indo-European lineage. It is cognate with Persian kun "anus" and kos "vulva", and with Greek ?????? (kusthos). Tucker and de Vaan derive it from an Indo-European *kut-nos akin to Welsh cwd 'bag, scrotum'. Eric Partridge's Origins, too, relates it to a reconstructed IE *kuzdhos (cf. Greek ??????), and even suggests cognates among the Afro-Asiatic languages (which is at best uncertain, given the variability of meaning and suffixes within Indo-European itself, as well as the rarity of Indo-European--Afro-Asiatic cognates in thoses instances where both the IE and AA reconstructions are clear).
Usage
Cicero's Orator (ad Marcum Brutum) §154 confirms once again its obscene status. Cicero writes:
- . . . cum autem nobis non dicitur, sed nobiscum? quia si ita diceretur, obscaenius concurrerent litterae.
- ("We don't say cum nobis ['with us'], but rather nobiscum; if we said it the other way, the letters would run together in a rather obscene way.")
Because the /m/ of cum assimilates to the /n/ of nobis, and because the accent was weaker in Latin than in English, cum nobis (although stressed on the middle syllable) sounds very similar to cunno bis (stressed on the first syllable), meaning "in/from/with a cunt twice". A similar euphemism occurs in French: the avoidance of qu'on, homophone to con (cunt), by the insertion of a superfluous letter: que l'on.
The word cunnilingus occurs in literary Latin, most frequently in Martial; it denotes the person who performs the action, not the action itself as in modern English, where it is not obscene but technical. The term comes from the Latin word for the vulva (cunnus) and the verb "to lick" (linguere, cf. lingua "tongue").
Horace's Sermones I.2 and I.3 use the word:
- Nam fuit ante Helenam cunnus taeterrima belli
causa. . .
which attributes, metaphorically (or more accurately through synecdoche), the cause of the Trojan War to Helen of Troy's vulva.
Synonyms and metaphors
These include sinus, "indentation", and fossa, "ditch".
The modern scientific or polite words vulva and vagina both stem from Latin, but originally they had different meanings. The word vagina is the Latin word for scabbard or sword-sheath.
Vulva (or volva) signifed the uterus. The meanings of vagina and vulva have changed by means of metaphor and metonymy, respectively.
In the Romance languages
Cunnus is preserved in almost every Romance language: e.g. French con, Catalan cony, Spanish coño, Galician cona, Portuguese cona, (South) Sardinian cunnu, Old Italian cunna. In Calabrian dialects the forms cunnu (m.) and cunna (f.) are used as synonyms of "stupid, dumb". In Portuguese it has been transferred to the feminine gender; the form cunna is also attested in Pompeian graffiti and in some late Latin texts.
Land?ca: the clitoris
The ancient Romans had medical knowledge of the clitoris, and their native word for it was land?ca. This appears to have been one of the most obscene words in the entire Latin lexicon. It is alluded to, but does not appear, in literary sources, except in the Priapeia 79, which calls it misella landica, the "poor little clitoris". It does, however, appear in graffiti.
Usage
Not even the poets Catullus and Martial, whose frankness is notorious, ever refer to land?ca. In a letter to a friend, Cicero discusses which words in Latin are potentially obscene or subject to obscene punning, and there hints at the word land?ca by quoting an unintentionally obscene utterance made in the senate:
- . . . hanc culpam maiorem an illam dicam?
- "shall I say that this or that was the greater fault?" with illam dicam echoing the forbidden word. Note that the "m" at the end of "illam" was pronounced like "n" before the following "d."
The word land?ca is found in Roman graffiti: peto [la]ndicam fvlviae ("I seek Fulvia's clitoris") appears on a leaden projectile found at Perugia, while a derivative word is found in Pompeii: evpla laxa landicosa; it is not clear here whether landicosa meant that Eupla had an unusually strong libido or a large clitoris. A large clitoris was an object of horror and fascination to the ancient Romans; Martial's epigram I.90 alludes to a woman who uses her clitoris as a penis in a lesbian encounter (http://www.barefootmuse.com/archives/issue7/salemi2.htm)
Synonyms and metaphors
Allusions to the clitoris in the Satires of Juvenal call it crista, "crest".
In the Romance languages
Land?ca survived in Old French landie (extremely rare), and in Romanian lindic.
C?lus: the anus
The basic Latin word for the anus was c?lus. The word was not considered quite as offensive as mentula or cunnus, but does appear in Roman ribaldry. The word is relatively common, and is productive in Romance.
Etymology
C?lus may be an o-grade of Indo-European kel-, which describes a covering; compare Latin celare, "to conceal." This etymology is problematic, though, and Adams says that its origin is obscure.
Usage
C?lus was applied to the anus of both man and beast; the c?lus of a horse is described in Cato the Elder's De Agri Cultura. Martial 11.21 speaks of a c?lus a?n?, "the bronze arsehole", as on a statue.
Synonyms and metaphors
The more seemly Latin word for the buttocks was cl?n?s (singular cl?nis); this word was generally more decent than c?lus, and older, as well: it has several Indo-European cognates. ?nus was the name for the posterior opening of the digestive tract; the word is not specific to that usage, but instead originally meant "ring". Its anatomical sense drove out its other meanings, and for this reason the diminutive annulus became the usual Latin name for a ring or circle. There is a similar word in Lithuanian: "klynas", meaning trousers' fly (an opening covering the groin).
A curious example of the usage of "ring" as a metaphor being kept (or most likely, having resurfaced) in a modern Romance language can be found in Brazilian Portuguese slang, as the word anel can have the same double meaning, especially in the expression o anel de couro (the leather ring). "Ring" is also British slang for "anus".
In the Romance languages
C?lus has been preserved as meaning the buttocks (rather than the anus) in most Romance languages except for Portuguese, which kept the original semantics. It yields the forms culo in Spanish and Italian; in French and Catalan it becomes cul, in Romanian cur, in Vegliot Dalmatian ?ol, in Sardinian culu, in Portuguese cu and in Galician cu. Its offensiveness varies from one language to another; in French it was incorporated into ordinary words and expressions such as culottes, "breeches", and cul-de-sac.
Merda: feces
Merda is the basic Latin word for excrement. Frequently used, it appears in most of the Romance languages. Excreta, literally "things expelled", referred most frequently to feces but could describe any bodily excretion. In its modern technical use, excreta is generally used to encompass fecal matter and urine.
Etymology
Merda represents Indo-European *s-merd-, whose root sense was likely "something malodorous." It is cognate with German Mist (dung), Lithuanian "smirda" ("it stinks"), Russian "????????" ("to stink") and Polish ?mierdzie? ( "to stink").
Usage
The word merda is attested in classical texts mostly in veterinary and agricultural contexts, meaning "manure". Cato the Elder uses it, as well as stercus, while the Mulomedicina Chironis speaks of merda bubula, "cattle manure". But Martial 3.17 uses it in its typical metaphorical sense, speaking of inedible cooking:
- Sed nemo potuit tangere: merda fuit.
- But nobody could touch it: it was shit.
Synonyms and metaphors
The politer terms for merda in Classical Latin were stercus (gen. stercoris), "manure" and f?mus, "filth." Stercus was used frequently in the Vulgate, as in its well-known translation of Psalm 112:7: (Psalm 113:7 in the KJV.)
- Suscitans a terra inopem, et de stercore erigens pauperem.
- ("Raising up the needy from the earth : and lifting up the poor out of the dunghill." DRC)
In the Romance languages
Merda is productive in the Romance languages, and is the obvious etymon of French merde, Spanish mierda, and in Vegliot Dalmatian miarda. It is preserved unaltered in Catalan, Galician, Italian, Portuguese, and Sardinian. It was preserved in Romanian too, not for feces, where c?cat (derived from caco) is used instead, but in the word dezmierda, originally meaning "to clean the bottom of (an infant)"; subsequently becoming "to cuddle" or "to fondle".
Futuere: intercourse
Futu?, infinitive futuere, perfect futu?, past participle fut?tum, Latin for "to copulate", is richly attested and useful. Not only the word itself, but also derived words such as perfututum, which could be translated "totally fucked", and d?fut?ta, "fucked out, exhausted from intercourse", are really attested in Classical Latin literature. The derived noun fut?ti?, "act of intercourse", also exists in Classical Latin, and the nomen agentis fut?tor, corresponding to the English epithet "fucker", also derives from that word.
Etymology
Theories are:
- Akin to battuere, "to beat"; this metaphor has a long Indo-European heritage. Battuere itself may be a late borrowing from Germanic.
- Tucker's dictionary invites comparison with c?nf?t?, "suppress" or "beat down".
- From *f?tus (4th decl.), a verbal noun from root fu-, and originally may have referred to intercourse for procreation.
Usage
Futu? is richly attested in all its forms in Latin literature. It is in itself used metaphorically in Catullus 6, which speaks of latera ecfut?ta, funds exhausted, literally "fucked away". Catullus 41 speaks of a puella d?fut?ta, a girl exhausted from sexual activity; while Catullus 29 similarly speaks of a mentula diffut?ta, a penis similarly worn out.
Futu?, unlike "fuck", was more frequently used in erotic and celebratory senses rather than derogatory ones or insults. A woman of Pompeii wrote the graffito fututa sum hic ("I got laid here") and prostitutes, canny at marketing, appear to have written other graffiti complimenting their customers for their sexual prowess: Felix bene futuis ("Lucky boy, you fuck well"); Victor bene valeas qui bene futuis ("Victorious, best wishes to one who fucks well"). It is famously used erotically in Catullus 32:
- sed domi maneas paresque nobis
novem continuas fututiones.- ("but you remain at home and prepare for us nine acts of fucking, one after the other.")
Futu? in its active voice was used of women only when it was imagined that they were taking the active role thought appropriate to the male partner by the Romans. The woman in Martial VII:
- Ipsarum tribadum tribas, Philaeni
recte, quo futuis, vocas amicam
is described as a tribas, a lesbian.
Synonyms and metaphors
The aggressive sense of English "fuck" and "screw" was not strongly attached to futu? in Latin. Instead, these senses attached themselves to p?d?c?re and irrum?re, "to sodomise" and "to force fellatio", respectively, which were used with famous hostility in Catullus 16:
- Pedicabo ego vos et irrumabo,
Aureli pathice et cinaede Furi,
qui me ex versiculis meis putastis,
quod sunt molliculi, parum pudicum.- ("I will bugger and facefuck you, pervert Aurelius and faggot Furius, because you thought me indecent because my poems are somewhat sissified.")
P?d?c?re is often thought to be a Greek loanword in Latin (from the noun ??????? (paidika) "boyfriend"), but the long "i" is an obstacle. Other more neutral synonyms for futu? in Latin include coe?, co?re, literally "to go with," whence Latin and English coitus.
Note: Irrum?re, which in English is denoted by the passive construction "to be sucked", is an active verb in Latin, since the irrumator was considered to be the active partner, the fellator the passive. Irrum?ti? is the counterpart of fellatio; in Roman terms, which are the opposite way round to modern conceptions, the giver of oral sex inserts his penis into the mouth of the receiver.
In the Romance languages
Futu?, a core item of the lexicon, lives on in most of the Romance languages, sometimes with its sense somewhat weakened: Catalan fotre, French foutre, Spanish follar and joder, Portuguese foder, Galician foder, Romanian fute (futere), Italian fottere. A famous ribald song in Old Occitan sometimes attributed to the troubadour William IX of Aquitaine reads:
- Tant las fotei com auziretz:
Cen e quatre vint et ueit vetz,
Q'a pauc no-i rompei mos corretz
E mos arnes- ("I fucked them as much as you will hear: a hundred and eighty-eight times. I most nearly broke my equipment -- and my tool.")
C?v?re and cr?s?re
C?ve? (c?v?re, c?v?) and cr?s? (cr?s?re etc.) are basic Latin obscenities that have no exact English equivalents. Cr?s? referred to the actions of the female partner in sexual intercourse (i.e. grinding or riding on a penis); as, similarly to the case in English, futu?, which is often translated "fuck", primarily referred to the male action (i.e. thrusting, pounding, slamming). C?ve? referred to the similar activity of the passive partner in anal sex.
Etymology
Both of these verbs are of fairly obscure origin.
Unlike most of the vocabulary of homosexuality in Latin (paedic?re, pathicus, cinaedus), c?ve? seems not to be of Greek origin. Francis A. Wood relates it to an Indo-European root *kweu- or *qeu-, relating to a variety of back and forth motions. also, in Slavic Languages- "kuvati" = smythe.
Usage
C?ve? always refers to a male taking the passive role in anal sex. Martial 3.95 contains the phrase "sed pulchre, Naevole, ceves." ("But you wiggle your arse so prettily, Naevolus.") On the other hand, cr?s? appears to have had a similar meaning, but to have been used of the female. Again Martial 10.68:
- Numquid, cum crisas, blandior esse potes?
Tu licet ediscas totam referasque Corinthon,
Non tamen omnino, Laelia, Lais eris.- ("Could you possibly be prettier as you grind? You learn easily, and could do everything they do in Corinth; but you'll never be Lais, Laelia.")
- Note: Corinth was the site of a major temple of Aphrodite; the temple employed more than a thousand cult prostitutes.
Synonyms and metaphors
These words have few synonyms or metaphors, and belong almost to a sort of technical vocabulary.
In the Romance languages
Both words seem to have been lost in Romance.
Cac?re: to defecate
Cac?, cac?re was the chief Latin word for defecation.
Etymology
The word has a distinguished Indo-European parentage, which may perhaps relate to nursery words or children's slang that tends to recur across many different cultures. It would appear to be cognate with the Greek noun ??????, kopros, meaning "poop" (hence, coprophilia). The use as a profanity and an insult in Greek has a long history, with Constantine V (718-775 AD) being named Kopronymos ("dung-named") by his political opponents. It also exists in Germanic; in German, Swedish (kack), Scots (as both noun and verb, cack or cackie, the diminutive), whilst English "poppiecock" derives from Dutch pappe kak, "diarrhea". It exists in Turkish (kaka), Irish and Scottish Gaelic (cac), Hebrew, Hungarian, Ukrainian (??????), Russian, Lithuanian and Persian/Esphehani accent (keke). In British English, "caca" is occasionally used as childish slang for excrement (similar to American English "poop"), a word whose level of obscene loading varies from country to country; whilst in Scotland and in Ireland, "cack" is occasionally used either as a mild interjection, or as an impolite adjective to mean of poor quality, broken, nonsense. It also exists as a loan in Finnish (kakka). The derivatives of this Latin word appear in Spanish, Catalan, Portuguese, Italian (cacca), Romanian, and French. Also, in Slavic languages: kakati.
Usage
Catullus 23 contains the lines:
- Culus tibi purior salillo est,
nec toto decies cacas in anno.- ("Your arse is purer than the salt-cellar; you probably only take a dump ten times a year.")
Catullus 36 contains the lines:
- Annales Volusi, cacata carta,
- ("Annals of Volusus, letters which have been defecated on,")--i.e. "worthless writings".
Apocolocyntosis Seneca writes Claudius' last words:
- "'vae me, puto, concacavi me.' quod an fecerit, nescio; omnia certe concacavit."
- ('Oh dear, I think I've shit myself.' I rather suspect he did, he certainly shat up everything else.)
Synonyms and metaphors
While cac?, like any other word relating to malodorous bodily functions, is used scurrilously and abusively in Latin literature, the word cac?re in its literal sense may not have been deeply offensive to the Romans (as opposed to e.g. 'cunire'). Few synonyms are attested in Classical Latin; the word d?f?c?re comes much later. (In Classical Latin, faex, plural faec?s, meant the dregs, such as are found in a bottle of wine; the word did not acquire the sense of feces until later.)
In the Romance languages
Cac?re is preserved unaltered in Sardinian and the southern Italian dialects, and with little alteration in Italian (cagare). It becomes Galician, Catalan, Spanish, and Portuguese cagar, in Vegliot Dalmatian kakuor, in French chier, and in Romanian as c?care (the act of taking a dump) or a (se) c?ca. (Feces are referred to as caca in French, Catalan, Romanian (besides c?cat) and Spanish childhood slang, while Portuguese and Romanian use the very same word with the general meaning of anything that looks or smells malodorous or reminiscent of excrement.) German kacken, Dutch kakken, Czech kakat, Lithuanian kakoti, Russian ?????? (kakat'), Icelandic kúka, Bosnian kakiti etc. are all slang words meaning "to defecate", most of them having roughly the same level of severity as the English expression "take a dump".
P?dere: fart
P?d?, p?dere, pep?d? (or pepid?), p?ditum is the basic Latin word for passing intestinal wind.
Etymology
The word's antiquity and membership in the core inherited vocabulary is made manifest by its reduplicating perfect stem. It is cognate with Greek ???????? (perdomai), English fart, Bulgarian prdi, Polish pierdzie?, Russian ??????? (perdet'), Lithuanian persti, Sanskrit pardate, and Avestan p?r??aiti, all of which mean the same thing.
Usage
The word p?dex was synonymous with c?lus, "buttocks" (see above); this o-stem version of the root identified it as the source of flatulence. In the Sermones 1.8, 46, Horace writes:
- Nam, displosa sonat quantum vesica, pepedi
diffissa nate ficus. . .- Christopher Smart translates this passage as "from my cleft bum of fig-tree I let a fart, which made as great an explosion as a burst bladder". The "I" of this satire is the god Priapus, and Smart explains that he was made of fig-tree wood which split through being poorly prepared.
Synonyms and metaphors
P?d? was the core word for the act of farting. The noise made by escaping flatulence was usually called crepitus, vaguely "a noise" or "a creak".
In the Romance languages and English
P?dere and p?ditum survive in Romance. In French, the noun pet <- p?ditum and the derived verb péter (for earlier poire <- p?dere) are very much alive. In Catalan, the verb is petar-se and the noun is pet. In Spanish the noun pedo as well as the verbs peerse and pedorrear are similarly derived. Portuguese peido and peidar(-se), (-dei) and Galician peido and peidar(se) are related. Italian peto is less common than scorreggia and its derived verb scorreggiare.
The English word petard, found mostly in the cliché "hoist with his own petard", comes from an early explosive device, the report of which was likened to that of flatulation. English also has petomania for a musical performance of breaking intestinal wind, and petomane for the performer, after Le Pétomane, a French performer active in the early 20th century.
Mingere and meiere: urination
Ming? (infinitive mingere) and mei? (infinitive meiere) are two variant forms of what is likely a single Latin verb meaning "to urinate", or in more vulgar usage, "to take a piss." The two verbs share a perfect mix? or m?nx?, and a past participle mictum or minctum. It is likely that ming? represents a variant conjugation of mei? with a nasal infix.
In Classical Latin, the form ming? was more common than mei?. In some Late Latin texts a variant first conjugation form mei?re is attested. This is the form that is productive in Romance.
The Classical Latin word mictur?re became the accepted medical word meaning "to urinate". It is the source of the English medical term "micturition reflex".
Etymology
Meiere is an inherited Indo-European word. It relates to Sanskrit mehati, "urinates", Persian m?z, "urine"; Lithuanian my?a, "he/she urinates", Greek ???????? (omeikhein), "to urinate", which, taken together, point to an Indo-European *h3mei?h-. This IE root with a palatal ?h was formerly mixed up (e. g. in Pokorny's IEW) with another one with velar *gh meaning "mist" (Russian mgla), hence erroneous tentative overall translations like "to sprinkle" or "to wet" which still turn up sometimes.
(In Classical Latin the verbs urinare and urinari mean "to dive".)
Usage
Martial's epigram 3.78 uses meiere and ?r?na to make a bilingual pun:
- Minxisti currente semel, Pauline, carina.
Meiere vis iterum? Iam Palinurus eris.- ("Once you pissed off the side of a boat, Paulinus. Do you want to piss again? then you will be Palinurus.")
- (Note that palin is a Greek root meaning "once again." Palinurus was Aeneas's navigator who was thrown overboard in the Aeneid.)
- ("Once you pissed off the side of a boat, Paulinus. Do you want to piss again? then you will be Palinurus.")
Synonyms and metaphors
The basic Latin noun for "urine" was l?tium. This word relates to lav?re, "to wash". The Romans, innocent of soap, collected urine as a source of ammonia to use in laundering clothes. Also, Egnatius, a Celtiberian who washes his teeth with urine, is the subject of one of Catullus's poems. The word ?r?na, of course, is also attested in Latin, and became the usual polite term. The relationship with the Greek verb ????? (oure?), "to urinate", is not clear.
In the Romance languages
Though ming? represents the most common Classical Latin form, mei?re seems to have been the popular form. This underlies Galician mexar, Portuguese mijar, and Spanish mear. *Pissi?re represents a borrowing from the Germanic languages, and appears elsewhere in the Romance territory, as in French pisser, Catalan pixar, Italian pisciare and Romanian a (se) pi?a, along with English to piss.
Latin words relating to prostitution
Compared to the anatomical frankness of the Roman vocabulary about sexual acts and body parts, the Roman vocabulary relating to prostitution seems euphemistic and metaphorical.
The most unambiguous Latin word for "to prostitute oneself" is scortor, scort?r?, which occurs chiefly in Plautus. This word may relate to Latin scorteus, "made of leather or hide", much as English refers to the skin trade; or it may be a pure pejorative related to Greek ????, ??????, "shit". Plautus illustrates its use in Amphitryon:
- Quando mecum pariter potant, pariter scortari solent,
Hanc quidem, quam nactus, praedam pariter cum illis partiam.- ("When they go out drinking and whoring, I'll certainly want a piece of that action myself.")
Prostitutes were called meretr?x, "earner", and lupa, "she-wolf"; a brothel was a lup?nar; these words referred to the mercantile and perceived predatory activities of prostitutes. The Latin word pr?stitu? had a root meaning of "to expose for public sale." The word gl?b?, gl?bere, gl?ps?, gl?ptus meant "to peel", and by extension, "to rob"; it was often used of prostitutes; compare English "she took him to the cleaners".
The important and productive words for a prostitute, *puta or *put?na, are not attested in Classical Latin, despite their many Romance derivatives: French putain and pute, Italian puttana, Spanish, Filipino, Catalan, Portuguese and Galician puta. Under French linguists point of view, they seem to relate to Latin pute?, put?re, "to stink," and thus to represent yet another metaphor.. In Romanian children's speech, "pu??" means penis. Spaniards María Moliner (author of the famous dictionary of Spanish) and Joan Coromines think they came from Vulgar Latin putta, feminine form of puttus, superlative (as adjective) form of putus, "pure", "boy". In Portugal, the word puto has the same connotation as "small kid" or "little boy"; in Brazil, nevertheless, it stands as a slang for "pissed off" or enraged males in general or as a colloquial, mildly offensive term for male escorts (more formally called prostitutos or michês) - the male counterpart of the slang puta, with the same meanings, albeit reserved for females.
In popular culture
The HBO/BBC2 original television series Rome depicts the city with the grit and grime that is often absent from earlier productions, including that of language. But since the actors speak English, Latin profanity is mostly seen in written graffiti, such as:
- ATIA FELLAT, "Atia sucks"; "fellatio" is a noun derived from this verb.
- ATIA AMAT OMNES, "Atia loves all [men]". Thus calling her a whore or slut.
- CAESARI SERVILIA FUTATRIX, "Servilia is Caesar's bitch".
However, the character Titus Pullo says "cack!" occasionally when irritated, most likely a derivative of caco above. And he and other characters use similar derivative words; "cunny", "cunt", "cully".
See also
- Vulgar Latin
Notes
References
Primary literary sources are discussed in text. Many of the graffiti discussed are found in the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum.
- The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (4th edition, 2000)
- James N. Adams, The Latin Sexual Vocabulary (Johns Hopkins, 1990) ISBN 0-8018-2968-2
- Dictionnaire Hachette de la Langue Française (Hachette, 1995) ISBN 0-317-45629-6
- T. G. Tucker, Etymological Dictionary of Latin (Halle, 1931, repr. Ares Publishers, 1985) ISBN 0-89005-172-0
- Francis A. Wood. "The IE. Root '*Qeu'-: 'Nuere, Nutare, Cevere; Quatere, Cudere; Cubare, Incumbere.' II" In Modern Philology, vol. 17, p. 567 ff. (Univ. Chicago, 1905)
- Fisher, John. The lexical affiliations of Vegliote (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1976) ISBN 0-8386-7796-7
- Smart, Christopher. Quinti Horatii Flacci Opera, with a literal translation into English Prose (London, Sampson Low, 1882)
External links
- The Priapeia (Latin and English)
- Poems of Martial (Latin)
- Poems of Catullus (Latin)
- Poems of Horace (Latin)
- Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum (German and English; partial)
- Latein-Online List of Swear Words (German)
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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