This is the allusionist in which I, Helen Zoltzmann, answer a phone call from language, but

all I can hear is breathing. Content note about today's show. Expect rich words about

sexual acts and associated body parts, so get out now if it's not appropriate for you

to listen to a discussion of flanges, bell towers, collie wobbling, curds and way, furious

eels. Right, etymology time. In episode 21 of the show, we learned the origin of penis

from the Latin for tail. Now it's time for the etymology of vagina, which word has been

around in English since about the 1680s. That meaning of bodily passage was a specialised

modern medical Latin sense of the older Latin word vagina, which meant a scabbard or sheath

or husk. That's nice isn't it? The comparison of a vagina either to something withered

and dry or to a receptacle for a weapon. One interpretation would be that modern medical

Latin was instituted by men who were either bitter or self-aggrandizing. It's not a sword,

gentlemen. It is not a sword. Quite a lot of genital words etymologies show that the body

parting question was just named after something it seemed to resemble. Glans, the Latin for

acorn, pelvis, Latin for basin or bucket, clitoris is from Greek, could be from the verb

clayane to sheath because it's covered, or from the noun form of that word, clayis, which

meant key. The other possibility is that it's from clatus, the side of a hill. So it's

either a view of the whole arrangement as a lock and key, or zooming into it so closely

all they could see was a hill. And exception to the things that look a bit like other things,

the genital etymologies is the word pudendum. It derives from the Latin word pudere meaning

to be ashamed. So your genitals were known as things to be ashamed of. What were you

supposed to do? Hope that if you ignored them, they'd go away. The vocabulary of sex is

laced with shame and condemnation. Think about how many words there are, like dirty and filthy,

...