nator writes:
OK, I have been back to EVC for only a few hours and already I'm finding myself needing to call out the sexist language.
dick/prick = jerk, or forceful
pussy = weak/cowardly
Any heterosexual man who uses pussy as a synonym for "weak" or "cowardly" clearly has no familiarity with the things.
A very forceful post, nator, and well laced with ignorance. Pussy is, I think, mainly an Americanism for vagina, although we do now sometimes use it here. The "scaredy cat" you might know from the 1940s cartoon, and the cowardly lion from The Wizard of Oz, but the association of the cat with its tail between its legs with cowardice goes back much further than that.
The cowardly lion, or
lion couard may well have arrived on this island with the Normans. It's a well known symbol in heraldry.
couard : dfinition de couard, citations, exemples et usage pour couard dans le dictionnaire de franais Littr adapt du grand dictionnaire de la langue franaise d'Emile Littr
"Scaredy cat" commonly, and "soft pussy" occasionally are expressions I remember from my 1960s London childhood. I probably wouldn't have known the American use of pussy for vagina at that time.
I called straggler a pussy first on this thread. If I wanted to call him a slang name for the vagina in English English, I'd have called him a "cunt", which isn't associated with cowardice, but is widely considered to be both crude and sexist here because it's used to describe someone bad or nasty, and why give such an association to the vagina?
I didn't (and wouldn't) call him a cunt.
If you're going to admonish people on the board, try not to do so from a position of ignorance.
Welcome back to EvC, the place that keeps you on your toes.