Pussy

Pussy (pronounced poos-ee or puhs-ee)

(1) In informal use, a cat, especially a kitten (also as puss & pussy-cat).

(2) In colloquial use (now rare), an affectionate term for a woman or girl, seen as having characteristics associated with kittens such as sweetness or playfulness.

(3) Anything soft and furry; a bloom form; a furry catkin, especially that of the pussy willow

(4) An alternative name for the tipcat (rare).

(5) In slang, a disparaging and offensive term referring to a timid, passive person (applied almost exclusively to men).

(6) In vulgar slang, the vulva (used as an alternative to the many other slang terms which includes beaver, box, cunt, muff, snatch, twat poontang, coochie, punani, quim & slit); considered by some to be the least offensive and probably the one most used by women.

(7) In vulgar slang, sexual intercourse with a woman

(8) In vulgar slang of male homosexuals, the anus of a man who is the passive participant in gay sex (ie “the bottom” as used by “the top”).

(9) In slang, a disparaging and offensive term for women collectively, a form of reductionism which treats women as sex objects.

(10) In medical use (pronounced puhs-ee), something puss-like or something from which puss emerges; containing or resembling pus.

(11) As pussy bow (or lavallière, pussycat bow or pussy-bow) a style of neckwear worn with women's blouses and bodices. A bow, tied (usually loosely) at the neck, the name is though derrived from the bows owners sometimes attach to their domestic felines (pussy cats).

1580s: The construct was puss +‎ -y (the diminutive suffix).  It may be from the Dutch poesje, a diminutive of poes (cat; vulva), akin to the Low German pūse (vulva) and the Old English pusa (bag).  Puss was probably from the Middle Low German pūs or pūskatte or the Dutch poes (puss, cat (slang for vulva)), ultimately from a common Germanic word for cat, perhaps ultimately imitative of a sound made to get its attention and therefore similar in origin to the Arabic بسة (bissa).  Some sources declare puss in the sense of "cat" dates from the 1520s but this is merely the earliest known documented source and use probably long predates this instance.  The same or similar sound is a conventional name for a cat in Germanic languages and as far off as Afghanistan; it is the root of the principal word for "cat" in the Rumanian (pisica) and secondary words in the Lithuanian (puž (word used for calling a cat)), the Low German (puus) and the Irish puisin (a kitten).  It was akin to the West Frisian poes, Low the German Puus & Puuskatte, the Danish pus, the dialectal Swedish kattepus & katte-pus and the Norwegian pus.  The form is known in several European, North African and West Asian languages and may be compared with the Romanian pisică and Sardinian pisittu; there is also a Celtic thread, the Irish pus (mouth, lip), from the Middle Irish bus.  The noun plural was pussies.

The French village Pussy sits on the eastern slope of Mont Bellachat above the left bank of the Isère, 5½ miles (9 km) north-west of Moûtiers; it is part of commune of La Léchère in the Savoie département of France.  The name is from Pussius, the owner of the region during the Roman occupation of Gaul.

Pussy was first used as a term of endearment for a girl or woman in the 1580s and (by extension), was soon used disparagingly of effeminate men and) and applied childishly to anything soft and furry.  The use to refer to domestic cats & kittens was exclusive by the 1690s but as early as 1715 it was applied also to rabbits.  The use as slang for "female pudenda" is documented from 1879, but most etymologists don’t doubt it had long been in oral use; perhaps from the Old Norse puss (pocket, pouch) (related to the Low German puse (vulva)) or else a re-purposing of the cat word pussy on the notion of "soft, warm, furry thing.  In this it may be compared with the French le chat, which also has a double meaning, feline and genital.  The earlier uses in English are difficult to distinguish from pussy, “pussie” noted in 1583 being applied affectionately to women.  Pussy-whipped in the sense of "hen-pecked" seems to date from 1956, a gentler form perhaps than the fifteenth century Middle English cunt-beaten (an impotent man).  Despite the feeling among many that the history in vulgar slang is long, etymologists note the rarity (sometimes absence) of pussy in its ribald sense from early dictionaries of slang and the vernacular before the late nineteenth century and the frequent use as a term of endearment in mainstream literature.

Lindsay Lohan in a Michael Kors (b 1959) pussy bow, polka-dot silk blouse with Valentino sneakers, about to enjoy a frozen hot chocolate, Serendipity 3 restaurant, New York, January 2019.

The pleonastic noun pussy-cat (also pussycat) which describes a domestic cat or kitten dates from 1773 and came soon to be applied to people although there appears to be no written record prior to 1859.  By the early twentieth century it came to be applied to smoothly running engines, the idea being they “purred like a pussycat”.  The noun pussy-willow was by 1835 a popular name of a type of common American shrub or small tree, so-called for the small and very silky catkins produced in early spring; in the 1850s the tree was also referred to as a pussy-cat but use soon faded.  To “play pussy” was World War II Royal Air Force (RAF) slang for "take advantage of cloud cover, jumping from cloud to cloud to shadow a potential victim or avoid recognition."  The medical use, the other (disgusting) adjectival forms of which are pussier & pussiest, dates from circa 1890 although in this sense Middle English had the mid-fifteenth century pushi, a variant of the Latin pus (definite singular pussen or pusset) which in pathology describes the yellowish fluid associated with infected tissue.

Kate Moss in pussy bow blouse on video link.

As a set-piece event, about the only thing which could have added to the spectacle of the Depp v Heard (John C Depp II v Amber Laura Heard (CL–2019–2911)) suit & counter-suit defamation trial in Fairfax County, Virginia, might have been Ms Heard (b 1986) afforcing her legal team with Rudy Giuliani (b 1944).  Whatever difficulties Mr Giuliani has had with judges, he was good with juries and may have been better at persuading the tribunal assembled in Virginia to ignore the many irrelevant revelations which so tantalized those running commentaries on social media.  As it was, there was something in the trial for just about everyone and one thing claimed by some to have exerted a subliminal influence on judge and jury was what model Kate Moss (b 1974 and appearing as a character witness for Mr Depp (b 1963) which whom she’d enjoyed a predictably well-publicized relationship during the 1990s) wore for her brief testimony.  That she appeared at all was because Ms Heard made the mistake of mentioning her name during testimony, thereby permitting Mr Depp's counsel to call her as a witness.  Looking stunning as expected, her appearance was quickly deconstructed and pronounced as crafted to convey “authority and authenticity”, the key points being (1) a simple hair-style, (2) an “authoritative jacket”, (3) “natural make-up” and (4) a blouse with a pussy bow “casually tied” to avoid the appearance of a contrived “court appearance look”.  In other words, she’d been styled to look like a witness appearing in court, not an actor playing a witness appearing in court.  Her three minutes on the stand via a video link should not, according to some lawyers, have been treated by the jury as substantive but what attracted most comment was her choice of a white, spotted pussy bow blouse, a feature described in one gushing critique as “…subtly subversive” with an origin as a kind of feminist battledress for those beginning the march through the institutions of male space; a challenge to the “traditional dress codes”.

Lindsay Lohan in black, semi-sheer pussy bow blouse, Saint Laurent fashion show, Paris Fashion Week, February 2019.  Clearly, Ms Lohan likes polka-dots.

Items recognizably pussybowish had been worn for centuries but the re-purposing to an alleged political statement is traced to the early 1960s when Coco Chanel (1883-1971) added more voluminous bows to silk blouses, the bulk and projection of the fabric off-setting the more severe linens and tweeds with which they were paired.  From there, the pussy bow as feminist statement is held to have become overt in 1966 with the debut of Yves Saint Laurent's (1936-2008) Le Smoking design which legitimized the presence of the pantsuit in catalogues and, increasingly, on the catwalk.  The 1966 piece was a revived tuxedo, tailored to the female form, in velvet or wool and notable for being softened with a silk pussy bow blouse which was interesting in that had it been combined with the traditional tie worn by men (which wouldn’t then have been anything novel), it would probably have been condemned, not as subversive but as a cliché.  As it was, the pussy bow lent sufficient femininity to the redefined pantsuit for it to be just radical enough to be a feminist fashion statement yet not be seen as too threatening.  Despite the claims of some, it wasn’t the first time the pussy bow had been paired with trousers but it was certainly the first appearance at a mainstream European show and it proved influential although YSL, so pleased with his models, perhaps didn’t envisage the look on latter-day adopters like crooked Hillary Clinton.

Whether the judge or jury in Virginia were pussy bow-whipped into finding substantially for Mr Depp isn’t known but it was certainly interesting Ms Heard lost in the US but won in the UK in 2020 despite both trials being essentially about the same thing: Did Mr Depp subject Ms Heard to violence and other forms of abuse?  Technically, there were differences, Mr Depp in the UK suing not his ex-wife but The Sun, a tabloid newspaper which had published a piece with a headline describing Mr Depp as a "wife beater".  By contrast, the US case revolved around an article in The Washington Post written by Ms Heard, the critical passages being three instances where she alleged she had been a victim of domestic abuse.  Mr Depp sued not the newspaper but Ms Heard, claiming her assertions were untrue and (although he wasn’t explicitly named as the perpetrator), that he’d thus been defamed.  The jury agreed Ms Heard (1) had indeed implied she was the victim of Mr Depp’s violence, (2) that her claims were untrue, (3) that purposefully she was being untruthful and (4) that her conduct satisfied the legal standard of “actual malice”, a critical threshold test in US law (dating from a ruling by the US Supreme Court in 1964 in New York Times v Sullivan) which imposes on public figures the need to prove statements (even if anyway technically defamatory) were made with the knowledge they were false or with reckless disregard of whether they were false or not, before damages may be recovered.

Melania Trump (b 1970, US First Lady 2017-2021 and since 2025) in pussy bow blouse, Federal Partners in Bullying Prevention (anti-cyber-bullying) summit at the Health Resources and Service Administration, Rockville, Maryland, 20 August 2018.

More significant still was probably that in London, the trial took place before a high court judge who ruled on both matters of law and fact.  By contrast, in the Fairfax County Courthouse, the judge ruled on matters of law but it was the jury which alone weighed the evidence presented and determined matter of fact.  Thus in London one legally trained judge assessed the evidence which hung on the issue of whether Mr Depp subjected Ms Heard to violent abuse during their brief and clearly turbulent union.  The judge found he had whereas seven lay-people, sitting as a jury concluded he had not.  The two processes are difficult to compare because judges provide written judgments (comprising the ratio decidendi (the reasons for the finding) and sometimes some obiter dictum (other matters of interest not actually critical in reaching the decision)) whereas juries operate in secret and what was discussed in the three days they took to deliberate isn’t known although there are hints in the list of questions they presented to the judge before delivering the verdict.  Those hints however hardly compare with Mr Justice Nichol’s (b 1951) ruling of some 67,000 words.

Sue Lyon (1946-2019) in pussy bow blouse in the film Lolita (1962) (left) and with pussy (right) in an image from a pre-release publicity set for the film, shot in 1960 by Bert Stern (1929-2013).

What happened in the two trials was not exactly comparable.  In the US, much was made of several statements earlier made by Ms Heard which, although not directly concerned with the matters being litigated, once proved untrue, were used by Mr Depp’s legal team to undermine Ms Heard’s credibility.  The matter of the US$7 million divorce settlement was for example mentioned by Mr Justice Nichol as an example of Ms Heard’s credibility because she didn't profit from divorcing Mr Depp, citing her announcement that she would donate the settlement to charity.  That she failed to do and perhaps remarkably, it wasn’t something at the time challenged by Mr Depp’s lawyers so the judge accepted it as fact.  Whether, had the judge known the truth, his findings would have be different will never be known.  Of interest too is that as a matter of law, Ms Heard's lawyers were not allowed to tell the jury the result of the UK trial and that in London Mr Depp's lawyers had made it clear they felt it unfair they were compelled to sue the newspaper and not Ms Heard.  In Virginia, as a defendant, Ms Heard became the focus and it did seem much of what was presented to the jury discussed her credibility, not of necessity relating to the substantive matters of the case but also of previous statements and conduct.  When the judgment in London was appealed, that was rejected by two judges of the Court of Appeal which may encourage Ms Heard.  Proceeding with an appeal in the US is a high-risk business and there are financial impediments even to lodging the papers but it is something which will not involve a jury, decided instead on points of law and procedure by judges less likely than jury members to be influenced by films they’ve seen, pussy bows or other extraneous material.

A pussy bow is thought either a fashion accessory or accoutrement depending on the way one thinks about things but however classified, the things intrinsically are ornamental.  However, because of their placement, if made with a sufficient volume of material, they can also be a modesty device on the model of the fig leaves hurriedly adapted by Adam & Eve in the Garden of Eden after committing mankind’s first sin, the tale recounted in the Old Testament’s Book of Genesis:

Genesis 3:1-24 (King James Version of the Bible (KJV, 1611))

(1) Now the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?

(2) And the woman said unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden:

(3) But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die.

(4) And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die:

(5) For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.

(6) And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat.

(7) And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons.

(8) And they heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day: and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God amongst the trees of the garden.

(9) And the Lord God called unto Adam, and said unto him, Where art thou?

(10) And he said, I heard thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself.

(11) And he said, Who told thee that thou wast naked? Hast thou eaten of the tree, whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldest not eat?

(12) And the man said, The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat.

(13) And the Lord God said unto the woman, What is this that thou hast done? And the woman said, The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat.

(14) And the Lord God said unto the serpent, Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life:

(15) And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.

(16) Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.

(17) And unto Adam he said, Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life;

(18) Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field;

(19) In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.

(20) And Adam called his wife's name Eve; because she was the mother of all living.

(21) Unto Adam also and to his wife did the Lord God make coats of skins, and clothed them.

(22) And the Lord God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever:

(23) Therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken.

(24) So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life.

There is much in Genesis including (3:7) the fig leaf inspiring the aprons Freemasons wear to hide their shame, (3:13) women are to blame for everything (a notion which has underpinned much of Christian theology for over 2,000 years) and (3:16) a woman is but a man’s chattel.

Brooks Nader in pussy bow and other items, Paris, July, 2025.

Sports Illustrated model Brooks Nader (b 1996) was in July 2025 photographed leaving Paris’s Laperouse restaurant is a sheer back top, what lay beneath not so much (partially) obscured by an over-sized pussy bow as accentuated.  Some thought obviously went into the ensemble because the pussy bow was neither small enough to be superfluous nor sufficiently bulky to be fig-leafesque.  So, in failing in both roles it succeeded as a piece of click-bait which was of course the design brief.  Interestingly, the pussy bow wasn’t the only (nominal) modesty piece worn by Ms Nader, a pair of “nude” silicone nipple pasties also discretely visible with the pussy bow working as a kind of focus-point for the assembled paparazzi.  Other than that, she was close to unadorned and that was a good decision because she looked so good accessories would have been a needless distraction.

Perhaps curiously, despite the early appearance of the motif, in the art of Christendom, for centuries the fig leaf wasn’t “obligatory” although they appear often enough that at times they must have been at least “desirable” and in other periods and places clearly “essential”.  Once case of practical criticism was the edict by Pius IX (1792–1878; pope 1846-1878) that extant male genitalia on some of the classical statues adorning the Vatican should be “modified” and that involved stonemasons, sculptors and other artisans receiving commissions to “modify or cover” as required, some fig leaves at the time added.  However, the late nineteenth century revisionism was restrained compared with earlier artistic pogroms, the most infamous the “Fig Leaf Campaign”, a crusade against nudity in art (especially male genitalia) initiated by Pope Paul IV (1476–1559; pope 1555-1559) and continued by his successors although it was most associated with the ruling against “lasciviousness” in religious art made in 1563 by the Council of Trent (1545-1563).  It was something very much in the spirit of the Counter-Reformation and it was Pius IV who commissioned artist Daniele da Volterra (circa 1509–1566) to paint over the genitalia Michelangelo (Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni; 1475–1564) had depicted on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, appending draperies or loincloths; to his dying day Romans nicknamed Volterra “Il Braghettone” (The Breeches Maker).  As late as the nineteenth century Greco-Roman statues from antiquity were still having their genitals covered with fig leaves (sometimes detachable, a trick the British Museum later adopted to protect Victoria’s (1819–1901; Queen of the UK 1837-1901) delicate sensibilities during her infrequent visits).  However, it’s a persistent myth popes sometimes would be seen atop a ladder, chisel in hand, hammering away for not only did they hire contractors to do the dirty work, what was done was almost always concealment rather than vandalism.  What was consistent however was that popes seen very much to have been penis-focused; despite in stone, marble and on canvas there being many bare breasts in the Vatican’s corridors and museums, there’s no record of pontiffs ever ordering them covered with pussy bows.

Pussy Riot band members Yekaterina Samutsevich (b 1982), Maria Alyokhina (b 1988) and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova (b 1989) in glass-walled dock during a court hearing, Moscow, Friday 17 August, 2012.

My darling Pussy: The letters of Lloyd George and Frances Stevenson, 1913-1941, (1975), edited by the English historian Alan John Percivale (A.J.P.) Taylor (1906–1990).

Even though it was well into the twenty-first century and the nation had long since succumbed to decadence, Boris Johnson (b 1964; UK prime-minister 2019-2022) still raided a few eyebrows when he and his girlfriend moved into No 10 Downing Street, the Tory Party’s few remaining blue stockings outraged because not only were they the first couple to take up official residence there without benefit of marriage but he was at the time still married to his second wife and the mother of four of his children.  History however recalls things had been more debauched, David Lloyd George (1863–1945; UK prime-minister 1916-1922) sharing the house during his premiership with not only his wife bit also his mistress, Frances Stevenson (1888–1972), the former usually ensconced upstairs in the prime-ministerial bed while her husband enjoyed his younger companion’s affections a few floors down.

The very modern-sounding arrangement was made possible by Ms Stevenson having been appointed by Lloyd-George as his secretary while he was chancellor of the exchequer, a job offer which was conditional upon her accepting concubinage as part of the job description and it’s never been doubted Lloyd-George was an earlier adopter of KPIs (key performance indicators).  The press were aware of the situation but things were done differently then and not a word of the unusual domestic setup appeared in the papers and surprisingly, even foreign journalists turned a blind eye when Lloyd George attended the Paris Peace Conference (1919) in the company of Ms Stevenson and though the rumor mill among the diplomats would have worked as efficiently then as now, the fiction she was “just his secretary” publicly was maintained by all.  In the lovers’ private conversations, she was his “Pussy” and he her “Tom Cat”, the feline theme taken up in his son’s 1960s biography when he noted of his father: “…with an attractive woman, he was as much to be trusted as a Bengal tiger with a gazelle.”  In 1975, Weidenfeld and Nicolson published My darling Pussy: The letters of Lloyd George and Frances Stevenson, 1913-1941, edited by A.J.P. Taylor.

Ffion Hague, Baroness Hague of Richmond, DBE.

Flawed like us all, Lloyd George was one of the great characters of twentieth century politics and one of the more noted political machinators, his life continuing to attract historians.  In writing The Pain and the Privilege: The Women in Lloyd George's Life (2008) Ffion Hague (b 1968 and the wife of William Hague (b 1961; leader of the British Conservative Party 1997-2001)) was, as a Welsh nationalist, perhaps biased and in much the same way A.J.P. Taylor’s hero-worship of Lord Beaverbrook (Maxwell Aitken, 1879-1964) made his 1972 biography of the press lord so vivid, Lady Hague’s views are not so much between the lines as the lines themselves but this is not a criticism of what is a most readable text.  Whether or not Lady Hague was a feminist was something some once felt compelled to debate although there is little to suggest she much dwelt on the matter but in declining to censure Lloyd George for his exploitive sexual relationships with women, she doubtlessly disappointed some of the sisterhood.  Her take on his many conquests was that things were really symbiotic; the women involved being well-informed individuals who knew what they were doing and ultimately gained from the relationships, brief though often they proved.  Her book was certainly a change from the tradition of treating Lloyd George’s proclivities as cynically and shamelessly transactional but, of course, as has long been known, there may also have been something of the physiologically deterministic in it.  When Albert James (A.J.) Sylvester (1889–1989; principal private secretary (PPS) to Lloyd George, 1923-1945) in 1947 published The Real Lloyd George, drawn from his diaries, the entry which drew most comment an admiring comment about the Welsh Wizard’s penis: “…the biggest I have ever seen.”  Disappointing some, Mr Sylvester didn't burden his readers with the details or extent of the observational history which made his comparison possible but it's presumed he was on some basis an empiricist.

CHAZZ Pussy Chips.

Formed in 2018, CHAZZ Chips is a Lithuanian company with origins in the Trakai district.  The operation describes itself as a “crazy young team” which was inspired to enter the potato chip (crisps in some places) business because of “totally boring and unhealthy snack shelves!”, thus the goal to “bring a variety of bold flavours and offer a healthier alternative to snacks.”  Using potatoes, beetroot and carrots grown on Lithuanian farms, the range of flavours is wide including some the company describes as being “things that most people probably wouldn't even dare to think about!”  That approach (“different, bold, inventive, proactive”) yielded the “first and only Putė and Pimpalo flavored chips in the world” but CHAZZ became most famous for their skandalingi-produktai (scandalous products) such as the (1) the Virginity Set (including Pussy flavor and Dick flavor), (2) the Naughty Valentine Set, a gift box which included the Virginity range as well as ChoClits and Sparkling Willies and (3 & 4) a brace of Libido Booster chips, the two recipes advertised as “for him” and “for her” which seems anachronistic given both could be gifts for him or her depending on their proclivities and some might enjoy both.  There is much science to the development of taste and smell in the food business but CHAZZ unfortunately don’t document the processes involved in creating (and presumably taste-testing) the Pussy and Dick flavours. 

Tuft

Tuft (pronounced tuhft)

(1) A bunch or cluster of small, usually soft and flexible parts, as feathers or hairs, attached or fixed closely together at the base and loose at the upper ends.

(2) A cluster of short, fluffy threads, used to decorate cloth, as for a bedspread, robe, bath mat, or window curtain.

(3) A cluster of cut threads, used as a decorative finish attached to the tying or holding threads of mattresses, quilts, upholstery, etc.

(4) To furnish or decorate with a tuft or tufts; to arrange in a tuft or tufts.

(5) In the upholstery trade, to draw together (a cushion or the like) by passing a thread through at regular intervals, the depressions thus produced being usually ornamented with tufts or buttons.  Tufts are not merely decorative because they secure and strengthen mattresses, quilts, cushions etc; they act to hinder the movement of the stuffing.

(6) In botany, a small clump of trees or bushes.

(7) A gold tassel on the cap once worn by titled undergraduates at English universities, one of the more blatant class identifiers if the UK’s class system; the word tuft was also applied to those entitled to wear such as tassel and from this use evolved the slang "toff".

1350-1400: From the Middle English toft & tofte (bunch of soft and flexible things fixed at the base with the upper ends loose), an alteration of earlier tuffe (which endures in the Modern English tuff), from the Old French touffe, tuffe, toffe & tofe (tuft of hair (and source of the modern French touffe)), from the Late Latin tufa (a crest on a helmet (also found in Late Greek toupha) and probably of Germanic origin (the Old High German was zopf and the Old Norse was toppr (tuft, summit).  The earlier European forms were the Old English þūf (tuft), the Old Norse þúfa (mound), the Swedish tuva (tussock; grassy hillock), from the Proto-Germanic þūbǭ (tube) & þūbaz.  It was akin to the Latin tūber (hump, swelling) and the Ancient Greek τῡ́φη (tū́phē) (cattail (used to stuff beds)).  The excrescent t (as in against) was an English addition and tuft was used as a verb from the 1530s.  In some contexts, bunch, cluster, collection, cowlick, group, knot, plumage, ruff, shock, topknot & tussock can impart a similar meaning but tuft is better for its specific purpose.  Tuft & tufting are nouns & verbs, tufted is a verb & adjective, tufter is a noun, tuftier & tuftiest are adjectives, tufty is a noun & adjective and tuftily is an adverb; the noun plural is tufts.

Little Miss Muffet in Hell.

The 1550s noun tuffet (little tuft) was from the Old French touffel (the diminutive suffix -et replacing the French -el) which was a diminutive of touffe.  In English the word is obsolete except for the use in the nursery rhyme Little Miss Muffet which seems to have first appeared in print in 1805 although it (and variations) may have been circulating much earlier.

Little Miss Muffet
Sat on a tuffet,
Eating her curds and whey;
There came a big spider,
Who sat down beside her
And frightened Miss Muffet away.

Etymologists believe Little Miss Muffet’s tuffet was a grassy hillock or a small knoll in the ground (a variant spelling of an obsolete meaning of tuft).  The latter-day use to refer to a hassock or footstool is an example of how (usually obscure) words can acquire meanings if erroneous definitions are often repeated and come to serve some purpose.  Tuffet for example became a favorite of antique dealers who are apt to call both footstools and low seats “tuffets”, a handy practice perhaps when provenance is doubtful.

Lindsay Lohan in bed with tufted bedhead.

Critics of interior design tend not to approve of padded or tufted headboards and the shinier or more pillowy the effect, the greater will be the disparagement.  Such critics probably tend to prefer a minimalist aesthetic and condemn anything which doesn’t conform as outdated, excessive or just in poor taste but that aside, there are practical reasons to avoid the padding because the material can over time collect dust, dirt, and oils, something of concern to allergy sufferers.  The designs can also provide hiding places for the dreaded bed bugs.  Still, there are some who like the “generic luxury hotel room” look and argue they’re a kind of safety feature, banging one’s head on some tufted padding a less troubling event than an impact with one of Ikea’s hard, flat surfaces.  Like any bed, there are advantages and drawbacks, some thing made more comfortable, some close to impossible.

Nobleman in full dress at Cambridge (1815) with golden tuft.

The noun toff began as mid nineteenth century lower-class London slang for "a stylish dresser, a man of the smart set".  It was an alteration of tuft, which was a mid-eighteenth century English university (Oxford & Cambridge) term for students who were members of the aristocracy, a reference to the gold ornamental tassel (or tufts) worn on the academic caps (mortarboards) of undergraduates.  Throughout the “long eighteenth century” (a historian’s term which refers for the epoch running from the Glorious Revolution of 1688 to the Congress of Vienna in 1815 (the “long nineteenth” being 1815-1914 and the “long twentieth” 1914-2001 (ie 9/11))), undergraduates at both Oxford and Cambridge were differentiated into four classes: (1) noblemen, (2) gentlemen, (3) commoner-scholars (fellow-commoners at Cambridge) & (4) servitors (sometimes known at Cambridge as sizars and at Oxford as battelers).  Each of these classes of undergraduates was entitled to a different form of dress, noblemen since 1490 (further clarified in 1576) entitled to wear silk and brocaded gowns of bright colors. Such rich materials emphasized noble status, as did the costly dyes. The gowns had flap collars, Tudor bag sleeves with gold lace decorations (akin to the black lace decorations used today on Oxford gimp gowns) and a velvet round cap with a gold tassel (or tuft) was worn.  Noblemen were technically (if misleadingly) nobiles minorum gentium and included the sons of bishops, knights and baronets and, by resolution of Convocation, could include heirs of esquires.

The right to wear the golden tuft was briefly restricted to those with fathers entitled to sit in the House of Lords while those less blue-blooded were allowed only to a plain black tassel but things gradually became less exclusive until the practice was abandoned in the late nineteenth century but the transfer of sense was inevitable: wearers of golden tufts came to be known as tufts.  Those toadies or sycophants (and there were many) who were slavish followers of the tufts were tufthunters and their antics, tufthunting, such individuals and their habits quite identifiable to this day.  By the 1850s, under the influence of the cockney accent, the word had been transformed into toff (some dictionaries of slang noting toft co-existed in the 1850s but this may have been a mishearing) which endures to refer to anyone rich and powerful although the original sense was of someone apparently well-bred.

1912 Stutz Bear Cat (1912-1934); after 1913 they would be dubbed Bearcat (left) and 1915 Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost (Chassis 2BD, 40/50; 1906-1926) limousine by H.A. Hamshaw (right).

One of the fastest and most admired American cars of the early era, the Stutz Bearcat assumed such a place in popular culture, it was was claimed that should anyone die at the wheel of a Stutz Bearcat, they were granted an obituary in the New York Times (NYT).  Wholly apocryphal, the origin of the romantic myth is thought to be related to the Bearcat being a symbol of wealth, adventure, and daring, owned by the sort of chaps (such a lifestyle at the time was most associated with men although women adventurers were not unknown) who would likely anyway warrant an NYT obituary.  The Bear Cat's tufted leather upholstery was typical (though not universal) of the high priced automobiles of the time although already, elaborate fabrics were appearing in vehicles with enclosed passenger compartments which afforded protection from the elements.  The appointments of 1915 Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost were opulent even by the coachbuilding standards of the day (the Edwardian traditions still maintained) but the chauffeur's compartment lacked a roof (the body style really a Sedanca de Ville as were many of the early English "limousines") so was still trimmed in tufted leather.  The more sheltered passengers enjoyed carved ivory door handles, beveled glass windows, cut crystal lamps, an inlaid wood folding table, two jump seats, and door pockets, communications to the chauffeur via a tubular intercom.  The lavish upholstery in the rear was tufted, beige West-of-England cloth with embroidered silk window pulls and trim-work, including rear compartment shades and sliding divider although what usually attracts most comment is the elegant, pleated, cloth rosette headliner with its cloudlike billows.   To make journeys more pleasant, a set of leather-wrapped flasks was mounted in the right rear armrest.      

1972 Oldsmobile Ninety Eight Regency advertising.

Tufted leather upholstery was common in early automobiles, the seating often exactly the same as those used in horse-drawn carriages, houses or commercial buildings (and certainly gentlemen's clubs).  The practice faded as production volumes increased and as early as the late 1920s was coming to be restricted to only the most expensive models.  This exclusivity tended to prevail until 1972 when Oldsmobile introduced the Regency option for its full-sized Ninety-Eight (sometimes as "98") models, a package, the visual highlight of which was tufted "loose-pillow" velour upholstery (although unlike the use in furniture where the "pillows" were detachable for cleaning, in the Ninety-Eight they were fixed permanently to the seats.  Suddenly, solidly middle-class Oldsmobile (right in the middle of General Motors’ (GM) five-step (Chevrolet-Pontiac-Oldsmobile-Buick-Cadillac) hierarchy; the so-called "Slone ladder" designed to both facilitate and encourage "upward automotive mobility" conceived by Alfred P Sloan (1875–1966;  president of General Motors (GM) 1923-1937 and Chairman of the Board 1937-1946)) had brought both velour and loose-pillow seating to the masses.  The velour was at the time admired by most buyers (though derided by some critics of design) and as tufted upholstery began to proliferate in the industry it was usually offered as a cheaper alternative to leather.  In some climates the velour was probably the better choice and was welcomingly comfortable although in some of the more strident shades of red could recall the popular idea of how a bordello might be furnished.  Presumably, those who'd never enjoyed a visit to a bordello were more disconcerted than regular customers.

1974 Imperial LeBaron four-door hardtop (left) in chestnut tufted leather though not actually “fine Corinthian leather” which was (mostly) exclusive to the Cordoba (1975-1983) until late 1975 when not only did the Imperial's brochures mention "genuine Corinthian leather (available at extra cost)" but for the first time since 1954 the range was referred to as the "Chrysler Imperial", a harbinger the brand was about to be retired.  Imperial's advertising copy noted of the brochure photograph above: “...while the passenger restraint system with starter interlock is not shown, it is standard on all Imperials.”; the marketing types didn't like seat-belts messing up their photos.  While all of the big three (GM, Ford & Chrysler) had tufted interiors in some lines, it was Chrysler which displayed the most commitment to the motif.

1977 Chrysler (Australia) Valiant Regal SE.

In the era, Chrysler's Australian outpost did cut a few corners when implementing the “pillowed look”, economies achieved by (1) using fewer buttons for the tufting of the fabric or optional leather and (2) attaching the tufted “feature sections” directly to the cushion squab rather than creating an emulated “pillowed” look which appeared to sit atop the structure.  Even by the time of the release of the CL range (1976-1978) the feeling was the writing was on the wall for the once popular Australian Valiant (1962-1981) and the top-of-the-line Regal SE was created in the Q&D (quick & dirty) way by including all the less Regal’s options as standard equipment; only the tufted upholstery and optional leather was unique to the model.  Sales were modest but there remained devoted following for the Valiant which was durable enough to endure the sometimes harsh environment and it was highly regarded for its towing capabilities.  Built on the US A-body platform, when production ended in 1981 it had lasted a half-decade longer than the Plymouth and Dodge versions sold in the home market and only in Mexico would use continue until 1988.

1974 Cadillac Fleetwood Talisman.

Oldsmobile's move was as audacious and influential as Ford’s introduction in 1965 of the up-market LTD which, like the Regency package, had the effect of cannibalizing sales from other divisions within the same corporation.  Cadillac, although with a range priced considerably above Oldsmobile, offered nothing with such an ostentatious interior though when it did in 1974 respond with its Talisman package (1974-1976), it made sure it did so with more tufted extravagance still, in 1974 offering leather as well as velour.  The trend the Regency package started would last over twenty years and is remembered especially for the tufted fittings used in Imperials, Chryslers and Dodges, the hides used in the Cordoba range (1975-1983) said to be "fine Corinthian leather", an advertising agency creation which meant nothing in particular but sounded vaguely European and therefore expensive.  Cadillac called the fabric in the Fleetwood Talisman "Medici crushed velour" which had about the same relationship to historic truth as "fine Corinthian leather" but the package sold well over the three seasons it was offered, despite the option costing almost as much (and the leather significantly more) as some new cars.  Among collectors, the holy grail is a 1974 Fleetwood Talisman trimmed in blue leather; although it was on the option list, none has ever been sighted and the factory's records don't breakdown production between the blue and the alternative "medium saddle" (a medium tan), some of which have been verified.

1985 Cadillac Eldorado Biarritz (left), 1977 Chrysler New Yorker Brougham (centre) and 1989 Cadillac Fleetwood Brougham d' Elegance (right).  Color choice made a big difference to the perception of the "tufted look", more subdued hues like green and blue less confronting than the "bordello red" which became emblematic of the industry's phase.

Sporange

Sporange (pronounced spawr-inj, spuh-ange or spor-inj)

In botany & mycology, a cell or structure within any organ (most especially fungi, Ferns, mosses, and algae) in which asexual spores are produced in indefinite numbers by progressive cleavage; also called spore case.

1880: Originally verbal shorthand between scientists; borrowed from the French as if derived from and sharing meaning with the correct term sporangium (plural sporangia, sporangial the adjective); now regarded also as a colloquial term (plural sporanges).  The original Late Latin sporangium dates from 1821 and was from the Ancient Greek σπόρος (sporos) (spore) or σπορά (sporá) (seed) + ἀγγεῖον (angeîon) (vessel).

A sporange (sporangium) is an enclosure in which spores are formed.  It can be composed of a single cell or can be multi-cellular and all plants, fungi, and many other lineages, form sporangia at some point in their life cycle.  Sporanges (sporangia) can produce spores by mitosis (the division of a cell nucleus in which the genome is copied and separated into two identical halves, normally followed by cell division), but in nearly all land plants and many fungi, sporangia are the site of meiosis (cell division of a diploid cell into four haploid (a cell having a single set of unpaired chromosomes cells) which develop to produce gametes (a reproductive cell (sperm in males or eggs in females), having only half of a complete set of chromosomes).

Perfect, half & fake rhymes

Like the word silver, orange has almost no perfect rhymes but the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) lists sporange, a rare alternative form of sporangium, as orange’s only perfect rhyme.  Sporange was a nineteenth century adoption from the French and from the medieval record, the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) also discovered the rare chilver (ewe-lamb, ie a female lamb), (now an almost extinct northern English dialectal form assumed to be Middle English, from the Old English cilfor (lamb), akin to the Old High German kilbur & kilburra (ewe lamb) and related to the Old English cealf (calf)).  Chilver appears to be silver’s only perfect rhyme so both it and orange are phonetically unusual, given English contains at least six-hundred thousand words (albeit not even a fifth of which are in common use).  Both orange and silver do however enjoy half-rhymes, the Oxford Rhyming Dictionary (ORD) listing “lozenge” for orange and “salver” for silver.

A full and stressed rhyme (eg hand / stand) or even an unstressed rhyme (handing / standing) contain vowels common to both words, while a half-rhyme like orange / lozenge or silver / salver has obvious differences between the vowels in certain syllables. The technical term for a half-rhyme is pararhyme.  A variation of the pararhyme seen often in modern poetry and popular culture is the slant rhyme, a trick which works through changing the pronunciation of two words slightly, forcing the rhyme.  Some fastidious critics refuse to call this a literary device and suggest they’re just “lazy” rhymes because they’re fake; close but fake.  A true rhyme pairs “bat” with “cat” while an example of slant rhyming is "door hinge” with “orange”.

2016 Dodge Viper ACR (513 cubic inch (8.4 litre) V10) with Extreme Aero Package in Dodge Yorange (PY5/KY5).  It was in 2003 a version of the Viper's V10 was released with a torque output rated higher than the 1970 Buick GSX 455 which for 33 years had set the mark for US cars in series production.  

Although there’s nothing to suggest there was interest in the adding to the language's rhythmic possibilities, Chrysler in the early twenty-first century did include Dodge Yorange to the color charts for some models, the construct being y + orange to suggest a shade of orange with a hint of yellow.  The recommended pronunciation was apparently yor-inj and it was most popular on SUVs (sports utility vehicle) and high-performance models.  Like other US manufacturers, Chrysler during the psychedelic era of the late 1960s had some history in the coining of fanciful names for colors when the choices included Plum Crazy, In-Violet, Tor Red, Sub Lime, Sassy Grass, Panther Pink, Moulin Rouge, Top Banana, Lemon Twist & Citron Yella.  Although it may be an industry myth, the story told is that Plum Crazy & In-Violet (lurid shades of purple) were late additions because the killjoy board refused to sign-off on Statutory Grape.

Ali Lohan (b 1993, left) photographed with her pregnant sister (b 1986, right) wearing Sandal-Malvina Fringe Tank Dress in (unattributed) Dodge Yorange (left).  The shoes are Alexandre Birmen Clarita Platforms.

Ampersand

Ampersand (pronounced am-puhr-sand or am-per-sand)

The logogram “&” now representing the conjunction "and"; it originated as a ligature of the letters of the Latin et (and).

1830-1835: A contraction of and per se and, meaning "(the character) '&' by itself is 'and'" (a hybrid phrase, partly in Latin, partly in English); an earlier form was the colloquial ampassy (1706).  It seems now curious, even nonsensical, but made complete sense given the way language was used as late as the nineteenth century.  The form emerged to create a distinction to help avoiding confusion with “&” in such formations as “&c.”, a once common way of writing “etc.” (the et in et cetera is Latin for "and").  Also, the letters “a”, “I”, and “o” were, as recently as the fifteenth & sixteenth centuries written “a per se”, “I per se” etc, especially when standing alone as words.

The symbol is based on the Latin et (and) and comes from an old Roman system of shorthand signs (ligatures) attested in Pompeiian graffiti.  It is not from the notae Tironianae (Tironian notes or Tironian shorthand) (a system of shorthand invented circa 60 BC by Marcus Tullius Cicero's slave and personal secretary Tiro which consisted of about four thousand symbols which, in classical times, was extended by another thousand) although a variety of sources have maintained the myth for hundreds of years.  The confusion has lasted centuries because some medieval scribes, including Anglo-Saxon chroniclers, sprinkled their works with a symbol like a numeral 7 to indicate the word “and”.  Technically, the ampersand is a mondegreen (a kind of imperfect echoic) of "and per se and".

Variations on the theme: Some of the most sexy ampersands. 

In many nineteenth century schoolbooks the ampersand was printed at the end of the alphabet and by the 1880s, the word ampersand had become schoolboy slang for "posterior, rear end, hindquarters", a use that faded in the twentieth century as the word assumed its standardized meaning and schoolboys found English offered many callipygian alternatives.  The form in which it appeared at the end of listings of the alphabet was “…X, Y, Z and per se and."  This eventually became "ampersand", the term in common English use by around 1837 although, in contrast to the surviving twenty-six letters, the ampersand does not represent a speech sound, unlike other characters that earlier dropped from the English alphabet such as the Old English thorn, wynn, and eth.

Curiously, given it had for centuries been in the sets of typefaces used by printers (the advantage being the use of one rather than the spaces "and" absorbs, thereby saving space and ink, the latter a measurable financial saving in large print runs because of the frequency with which "and" needs to be expressed), the ampersand symbol (&) wasn't included in many early typewriters.  Instead, typist were compelled to improvise their own ampersands by typing an "e", then back-spacing and adding a "t" atop.  The manufacturers of the early typewriters limited the character sets included because the early devices were so prone to jamming and one way to reduce instances of this was to increase the space between the metal "arms" to which the "type bars" (also known as "strikers"; the upright ends of the bars which are molded as the "head" with the embossed letter, number or symbol) were attached.  Increasing the gap between the arms limited the number which could be installed so on the essentials were included.  As technology improved, the character sets were enlarged and the by the early twentieth century, the ampersand was de rigueur.

The Plastics Mean Girls Unisex Ampersand Sweatshirt, available in Thursday to Tuesday (left) & Wednesday (right) editions.