And before.
“And prively he caughte hire by the queynte”
— Geoffrey Chaucer, The Miller’s Tale
“Queynte”, surprisingly, is not just Chaucer’s Middle English spelling of the c-word. It means a pleasing thing or ornament, so Chaucer is making a pun.
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Well, different cultures are different, right? I mean, different histories? Entirely different meanings of words?
I mean, why is it okay to call a person named Dick, “Dick” but not okay to say “dick”?
Language is just complicated.
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I’ll file that next to “For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge.”
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Sure, but in the case of UK and USA not that different. I mean not like India versus China different.
Also sure, “boot” (car trunk) in UK versus “boot” (kind of a tall… shoe?) in USA. Or “chips” (french fries UK) versus “chips” (potato chips USA).
But the cxxt word has the same meaning in both languages. It’s the intensity of the word that is radically different. To me, that’s a very different, and much more interesting / rare animal.
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