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> the word whose usage is considered so offensive that it has caused the decline of its unfortunate near-homophone ‘niggardly’ That's not exactly a unique phenomenon. For example, it's how "rabbit" replaced "coney".
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Which is funny because coney used to be pronounced more like cunny and was deliberately pronounced coney to get away from the vulgar associations.
Interesting maybe that Coinín (sp?) is rabbit in modern Irish/Gaeilge and is pronounced in the former manner. Presumably it has some indo European roots, that didn’t spread into common English usage.
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Help out a non English speaker if you can. What vulgar associations ? EDIT: Thanks, all who responded. I wouldn't have made the connection although I am quite familiar with the 'vulgar' word in question. The phonetic similarity sounds farfetched to me, one ends with a hard consonant, the other with a vowel sound.
Female genitalia, along the lines of Shakespeare's "Country matters".
CU in the [state initials].
(Absolutely no worse than the FCUK clothing label, which I just find annoyingly lame - at least it was funny.)
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In Spanish conejo (rhymes with coney) is rabbit. Interesting how we’re still slowly loosing cognates from our shared latin roots. Edit: I may be assuming an incorrect pronunciation of coney. Even as a native speaker English sucks.
Even in Dutch they use the word konijn, I actually had no idea that "coney" was an English cognate for that word until reading this thread, I love learning these associations as making connections like this really helps in learning new languages. As an aside, Spain itself was named after rabbits, which I find hilarious: http://www.ctspanish.com/rabbits.htm
This is of limited value in learning English; at least in America, I wouldn't expect the man on the street to know the word at all.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Interesting maybe that Coinín (sp?) is rabbit in modern Irish/Gaeilge and is pronounced in the former manner. Presumably it has some indo European roots, that didn’t spread into common English usage.
Rabbits were introduced to Ireland, so the word for them was probably borrowed from English or French.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Which is funny because coney used to be pronounced more like cunny and was deliberately pronounced coney to get away from the vulgar associations.
Interesting maybe that Coinín (sp?) is rabbit in modern Irish/Gaeilge and is pronounced in the former manner. Presumably it has some indo European roots, that didn’t spread into common English usage.
> the word whose usage is considered so offensive that it has caused the decline of its unfortunate near-homophone ‘niggardly’ That's not exactly a unique phenomenon. For example, it's how "rabbit" replaced "coney".
And why is that etymologically connected to the latin for ‘turnip’? This seems as strange now as the fact “mincemeat” (no space) in mince pies is vegetarian (the answer: because “meat” used to mean any food not just animal flesh, but it’s still strange to see that today).
It's amazing how many people still fall for the 'fuck-as-acronym' myths. I've literally argued with people convinced that FUCK stands for Fornication Under Consent of the King, or (as Van Halen apparently believed) For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge. No, none of the above. Nope.
I've heard that one for "naff", allegedly from "not available for f--", which is probably bogus but the etymology is very unclear: https://www.theguardian.com/notesandqueries/query/0,,-1648,0... The suggestion that it comes from Polari is far more interesting, as Polari was incorporated into the great British tradition of using innuendo to get past unimaginative censoriousness. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_an…
For anyone who finds words and etymology fascinating, I highly recommend John McWhorter's podcast, Lexicon Valley.
Whilst we're taking and making suggestions, the Online Etymological Dictionary, a true gem of the Internet: https://www.etymonline.com/ (Donations welcomed and encouraged. No affiliation, just a very satisfied user.)