The word pussy has never referred to female genitalia when describing someone who is timid and cowardly by the way. It comes from the word pusillanimous. Iâm begging Twitter feminists to stop tittering smugly about how they do this ultra feminist girlboss role reversal thing where they call men ballsacks because those are the more fragile set of parts. âPussyâ was never talking about your body parts. You are the only ones doing that. You are making the biggest fools of yourselves please stop
There are two different words involved:
Pusillanimous comes from Latin pusillus ("very small") + animus ("spirit, courage"), literally meaning "small-spirited" or cowardly.
Pussy has a much more complicated etymology. Historically, it was a pet name for a cat (attested since the 1500s), and later became a slang term for female genitalia (attested by at least the late 1600s).
When pussy came to mean "a coward" (mainly in American English in the late 19th and early 20th centuries), linguists disagree about the precise pathway:
It may have developed from the sense of "cat" (suggesting someone timid or easily frightened, like a scared cat).
It may have been influenced by the vulgar term for female genitalia, reflecting sexist stereotypes that associate femininity with weakness.
Some scholars think both meanings reinforced each other.
What there is no evidence for is that the cowardly sense is derived from "pusillanimous."
The resemblance between pussy and pusillanimous is almost certainly coincidental. Etymologists do not trace one word to the other, and major dictionaries such as the Oxford English Dictionary and the Merriam-Webster do not derive pussy from pusillanimous.
The "it comes from pusillanimous" explanation has become a popular internet myth because it avoids the sexist connotations of the insult, but there is no historical linguistic evidence that this is its origin.
thank god someone wrote this so i didnât have to. âwaah theyâre saying weak as balls and they look sooooo foolish,â you got upset abt it enough to make a post spreading easily searchable misinfo brother you also look triggered and dumb
Also, even if it was originally etymologically related to pusillanimous rather than the slang term for female genitalia, men are using it with that association anyway, so it would still be an insult rooted in misogyny.
