My 2c as a catalan speaker. Apparently cunt is related to the latin "cunnus" (wedge). We also have a vulgar word related to cunnus for vagina, "cony". Its use is not as offensive as cunt, but it is up there with "puta" (whore) as the worst things you could say to a woman. However "cony" is also used in a sexual context: "Et vull menjar el cony" could be translated to "I want to eat your pussy".
Of course we have other obscene words for vagina. One of them is "conill" (rabbit), which is apparently related to "cunniculus" (burrow). The analogy between the action of the animal when hiding and the sexual act seems clear, but however this one is almost exclusively used in descriptive contexts: "L'hi he vist el conill", "I've seen her pussy".
"Conill" is also used more innocently. A young girl (~4yo) who is playing and running around naked could be affectionately called by female relatives "conillet". "Ai el conillet!" as in "oh, the little rabbit!". The goal here, I believe, seems to be not really shaming her to get dressed, but to make her aware that she is naked.
The animal analogy (?) would be similar to that of beaver, I suppose. But of course no mother would call her naked girl little beaver.
Maybe it's just me, but I find it fascinating how languages converge and diverge, and how we find hilarious and imaginative ways to describe the world around us.
Help out a non English speaker if you can. What vulgar associations ?
EDIT: Thanks, all who responded. I wouldn't have made the connection although I am quite familiar with the 'vulgar' word in question. The phonetic similarity sounds farfetched to me, one ends with a hard consonant, the other with a vowel sound.
> EDIT: Thanks, all who responded. I wouldn't have made the connection although I am quite familiar with the 'vulgar' word in question. The phonetic similarity sounds farfetched to me, one ends with a hard consonant, the other with a vowel sound.
It's not that "coney" sounds like "cunt". It doesn't. It's that it sounds like "cunny", which is a diminutive form of "cunt". Just like "Annie" is a diminutive form of "Anne", or "kitty" is a diminutive form of "cat".
Oh I wasn't comparing coney and cunt. To me even cunny and cunt seems quite far apart, admittedly not familiar with the diminutive or adjective form. Thanks all for the education in the colorful English vernacular (I mean that with sincerity, I can well imagine getting into a tough spot by dropping the word 'coney')
Interesting maybe that Coinín (sp?) is rabbit in modern Irish/Gaeilge and is pronounced in the former manner. Presumably it has some indo European roots, that didn’t spread into common English usage.
Yep. In fact, depending on which classification scheme of the Indo-European languages you follow, it could be argued it's closer to Irish than it is to English (Italo-Celtic branching). But I was just agreeing that it did come from, essentially, a dialect of French.
