A Pyrate Perspective
The thoughts and feelings of a Pirate Wiccan on Pagan issues and community.
Cunt: The Reason for the Season
I was inspired by Janet Boyer's article "Rabbit Symbolism in the Tarot" to repost from my personal blog an article that I wrote about a week ago on the hare.
Cunt: The Reason for the Season
Cunt. C-U-N-T. CUNT! CUNT! CUNT!
Cunt, the forbidden word.
I love this word.
The other day, this word came up in a coven class and no one wanted to say it.
I, however, really wanted to break into this:
Since I have no acting talent, I was gracious enough not to hurt everyone’s ears, but…as someone in the third wave of feminism, I consider cunt to be more than simply a “reclaimed” word. It is a powerfully evocative word that just makes me shiver with glee.
As a witch, it has even more importance to me, and it all centers around Ostara.
You can track down various meanings and etymologies of the word cunt, but in this case, I like to look at it’s progression from the word ‘coney’ or hare.
The Online Etymology Dictionary says, “Alternative form cunny is attested from c.1720 but is certainly much earlier and forced a change in the pronunciation of coney (q.v.), but it was good for a pun while coney was still the common word for “rabbit”: “A pox upon your Christian cockatrices! They cry, like poulterers’ wives, ‘No money, no coney.’ ” [Philip Massinger: "The Virgin-Martyr," Act I, Scene 1, 1622]“
Of course, if you weren’t familiar with coneys before, you were after this scene from the Lord of the Rings trilogy:
Hares are one of the first animals to poke their noses out and start procreating during the earliest days of spring. Not only do they, well, “go at it (actual word removed because it's prohibited on this site) like bunnies”, but if you look at a hare’s tail, it looks like a woman’s pubic hair.
This has been used as a symbol of the goddess Eostre to represent both the birth canal and her reproductive abilities. For centuries, many British folk customs have centered around the hare during the month of April. Many academics also tie the hare to Freya, who didn’t have hares pulling her chariot, but a pair of cats. What do we call our cats these days? Pussies of course! So…coney – cunny – cunt – pussy…!
And there you have it. CUNT! The reason for the season.
Now say it with me kids, “CUNT!”
And remember, the next time you call a woman a cunt, you’re calling her a queen. So maybe she does deserve it after all.
Comments
-
Tuesday, 19 March 2013
Or from the OED:
† ˈcony | coney, v.
Pronunciation: /ˈkəʊnɪ/ /ˈkʌnɪ/
Forms: Pl. conies ( coneys). Forms: α. ME cunin, ME konyng, ME conyng(e, ME conninge, conynge, konyne, kinyng, ME–15 cunning, cunyng, cuning, 16–17 kinnen; β. ME cunig, ME conig, ME connyg; γ. 15–16 conie, conye, connie, connye, conny, conney, cunnie, cunney, 15–17 cunny, ME– cony, 15– coney.(Show Less)
Etymology: The current form represents Old French conil, connil, cognate with Provençal conil, Spanish conejo, Portuguese coelho, Italian coneglio to the 16th cent.; but from the 12th cent. onward it varied also with cunig, conig, connyg. The historical pronunciation is with /ʌ/ ; common spellings from 16th to 18th cents. were cunnie, cunney, cunny, and the word regularly rhymed with honey, money, as indicated also by the spelling coney; but during the 19th cent. the pronunciation with long ō has gradually crept in.
This pronunciation is largely due to the obsolescence of the word in general use, while it occurred in the Bible, and especially in the Psalms, as the name of a foreign animal (sense 3); the oral tradition being broken, readers guessed at the word from the spelling. It is possible, however, that the desire to avoid certain vulgar associations with the word in the cunny form, may have contributed to the preference for a different pronunciation in reading the Scriptures. Walker knew only the cunny pronunciation; Smart (1836) says ‘it is familiarly pronounced cunny’, but cōny is ‘proper for solemn reading’. The obsolescence of the word is also a cause of the unfixed spelling; the Bible of 1611 has conie, cony, conies, modern editions coney, conies (compare money, monies), an irregularity retained in the Revision of 1885.
The rabbit is evidently of late introduction into Britain and Northern Europe: it has no native name in Celtic or Germanic, and there is no mention of it in England before the Norman period; in the quotations the fur, perhaps imported, appears before the animal. The Welsh cwning, cwningen, is from Middle English; the Irish coinnín, and Gaelic coinean, coinein from Middle English or Anglo-Norman French....
†5.
a. A term of endearment for a woman. Obs.
a1528 J. Skelton Elynour Rummyng 225 He calleth me his whytyng, His nobbes and his conny.
a1556 N. Udall Ralph Roister Doister (?1566) i. iv. sig. C.j, Ah sweete lambe and coney.
1562 J. Heywood Prov. & Epigr. (1867) 181 Iane thou sellest sweete conies in this pultry shoppe: But none so sweete as thy selfe, sweete conye moppe.
1613 F. Beaumont Knight of Burning Pestle Prol. sig. B1v, Wife..Husband, husband... Cit. What sayst thou cunny?
b. Also indecently.
1611 Troublesome Raigne Iohn (new ed.) i. sig. E4, Now for your ransome my cloyster-bred conney.
1622 T. Dekker & P. Massinger Virgin Martir ii. sig. C4v, A pox of your christian Coxatrices, they cry like Poulterers wiues, no money, no Cony.
1631 T. Dekker Match mee in London i. i. 44 The Conyes vse to feed most i'th night Sir, yet I cannot see my young mistris.
1720 in T. D'Urfey Wit & Mirth VI. 198 The Cunny she shows play, and..Like a Cat she does spit in his Face. -
Tuesday, 19 March 2013Well, I see my link did not come through:
-
Tuesday, 19 March 2013 -
Tuesday, 19 March 2013
@Chas: Sorry that the link didn't come through, but as you see, I've posted it above.
-
Please login first in order for you to submit comments
Or maybe the word "cunt" has nothing to do with bunnies at all, if you trust the Online Etymological Dictionary.
Another etymology traces it to a Proto-Indo-European root for "something round," and related to the word "cottage."