The girl second from the left knows whatâs being said.
Wow. âNot much rightâ, is right. Surely the illustrator was in on the joke? Itâs so out there.
YepâŠI remember playing this in Brownies over 20 years ago. It felt a bit icky at the time, despite not having a clue about the creepy overtones.
I too remember the game from when I was a kid, sufficie it to say much more than 20 years ago. At that time, people could still say âpussyâ with a straight face, and kids were assumed to be asexual.
Old books need to be taken in the context of their time.
Merriam-Webster places the vulgar use of the term as either Low German or Scandinavian in origin, dating back to 1879. My take on it was that it was a coded word around the time of publication, just before it soon became a mainstream vulgarity.
Of course, there are still so many things wrong with the game in itself, with the intonations of subservience/degradation and whatnot.
I remember playing this as a REALLY little kid. We may have said âpoor kitty,â though. Too long ago to remember clearly.
I think Alfred on the left looks like heâs nodded off.
Absolutely not. The game is about acting, on both sides. Can you meow plaintively/realistically enough that your victim canât help laughing? Can you maintain a straight face while laughing internally?
Itâs no more about oppression than duck-duck-goose is about waterfowl.
The OED first source of âpussyâ as referring to female genitals comes from 1699 (thereâs an uncertain one earlier), and given that itâs a pretty taboo word, we can probably assume that it was used for a while before that. The sense âcatâ dates from the 16th century, with uncertain etymologies (except noting that itâs probably cognate with some German and Scandinavian words).
By the way, far and away my favorite citation in the entry is from 1865, from something called The Love Feast; or, A Brideâs Experience. A Poem in Six Nights by someone named Philocomus:
My poor pussy , rent and sore, Dreaded yet longed for one fuck more.
It doesnât appear that the full work appears online, which I think we can all agree is a damn shame.
I probably could, but I could also do it when not on all fours.
Donât get me wrong. Iâm not one of those âanti-tag-on-the-playgroundâ types, but there are many ingrained behaviors in our daily lives that we tend to take at face value. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, and sometimes itâs not. I see an equivalent awareness in the recent refusal of certain sportscasters to call a certain Washington football team by its assigned moniker.
I agree with lettuse and the creepy overtones.
Iâm starting to feel like Merriam-Webster is the Daily Mail of the dictionary world.
Havenât been able to find the entire poem for context, but if if this line is spoken from the male voice, âpussyâ could be a diminutive for the woman in question, rather than a woman referring to her own hoohah.
Still leaves open the possibility that it is metonymical, though.
The OED cites it as referring to female genitals, and they presumably have the full text and could see the context.
By the way, this text is cited all over the place in the OED. For instance, hereâs a citation from the entry for âbumholeâ:
Thus he buggered and befrigged, Cunt filled, and bum-hole, too, well rigged.
From âfuckâ:
That night I never shall forget; We fucked and fucked, and fucked and sweat.
From âgamahucheâ (course slang for fellatio or cunnilingus):
âIâm going to teach your velvety cartouch [sic] The art and mystery of the gamahuche.â
From âmachineâ (in the sense âslang. The penis; the female genitals (rare)â):
It entered quite deep in her sucking machine.
From âpoleâ:
He oilâd his long and rampant pole, And tried to thrust it in the hole.
And âpegoâ (slang for penis):
A cuntâŠ'Twill grasp a prick the smallest size, And suck it till the spending flies, and then 'twill stretch till you can take A pego of the largest make
There are a bunch others (22 in total). I really want to read this book now.
Reminder: KIDS. Kids havenât yet been brainwashed into believing that crawling, or sitting on the floor, or playing make-believe, is undignified. Frankly, I donât find it undignified either, and I havenât been a kid for [mumble] decades.
Of course there are contexts of coercion and the like which would give it a different interpretation. And there are people who canât deal with the concept of an adult â or a kid â being only as dignified as is actually appropriate for the situation. But thatâs like saying that bathing suits are undignified because they expose more skin than would usually be considered appropriate for an audience with the Queen. Context matters tremendously!
If this book is like most of its kind, odds are extremely strong that the game was invented by kids and merely documented/formalized by the adult writers. And this one in particular is probably age-appropriate up to kindergarten or so, if that; after that itâs simply not interesting.
So: If it doesnât sound like fun to you, thatâs fine; donât play it. But heck, I will still play cat on occasion to get a laugh out of friends. And I remember playing this when I was that age and it really did NOT carry any of the connotations youâre worried about; it was just a more organized party-game version of the make-each-other-laugh game we already played with friends.
If you canât be silly when you want to be, and canât laugh with your friends when you want to do so, youâre doing it wrong. For many values of âitâ.
(If youâre worried about kids being coerced to play a game â ANY game â thatâs a completely different kettle of worms and probably belongs in a different thread.)
Dr. Johnson: So, ahem, tell me, sir, what words particularly interested you?
George, Prince Regent: Oh, er, nothing⊠Anything, really, you knowâŠ
J: Ah, I see youâve underlined a few (takes dictionary, reads): âbloomersâ; âbottomâ; âburpâ; (turns a page) âfartâ; âfiddleâ; âfornicateâ?
G: WellâŠ
J: Sir! I hope youâre not using the first English dictionary to look up rude words!
Blackadder: I wouldnât be too hopeful; thatâs what all the other ones will be used for.
The undignified part comes when I try to get back up off the floor.
See, the thing is, it certainly feels like youâre likening me to a prude, which I am not.
All I am saying is that somebody with an iota of worldly experience might have explained a few things about life to the editor â whom I see in this situation as Moe the bartender, who doesnât get that noâŠno we have not seen Mike Hunt this evening.
edit: and a smarter employee could have saved his bacon (future reputation in 2013) by offering up a variation on the game, as Hide-and-Seek is to Kick-the-Can or Sardines.
I donât think youâre a prude â I think youâre trying to apply adult reasoning to a childrenâs game in a way that simply isnât appropriate. And to apply 2013 sensitivities to a 1950âs book describing a game which may go back centuries.Even for 2013 Iâd count you as a somewhat overprotective parent, but many now are.
âThereâs lots of words, and you can use some of 'em over again.â â Pogo, via Walt Kelly.
You are George Galloway, and I claim my five pounds.
