Talk:fanny
General discussion[edit]
Please do not recommend that anyone says "front bottom".
We do not recommend anything. We just record things as they are.
Translations: vulva or vagina See pussy tehee! it said to see pussy!
er, I hate to jump in here all sarcastic like, but how does one get from "Mess kettle or cooking pot" to "vagina"? I think your etymology is extremely reductionist and actually hilights that there are probably parallel etymologies for the two *entirely* different meanings. see http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=fanny for a *much* more likely derivation, especially given that "Fanny Hill", written in 1749, was not (legally!) widely available in the US until more than 200 years later (1966!). Americans would not have had the same context as the Brits. This does leave open the question of exactly *where* the "cutesy" American usage derives from.
- The mess kettle sense is described, the others are unrelated and not yet described. Fanny Hill sounds speculative, but stranger things have happened. -- Kevin Ryde 00:40, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
In respect to the British usage, the Oxford English Dictionary (THE definitive source, especially as they require written proof of first usage and origin, and employ a large team of researchers to discover just that) lists the word as "origin unknown". 'Nuff said, don't ya think?
P.S. It is bloody hilarious when Americans talk of 'fanny packs' ('Bum bags' over here, which I can imagine would be also very funny the other way round)! --Dan 13:14, 7 March 2007 (UTC)
As far as U.S. usage is concerned (meaning the buttocks), I would say that, at the present time at least, this is a word mostly used with, by or of women or children. Men talking among themselves would be more likely to talk of a child's or woman's fanny than their own or another man's. This is not absolute, of course, and is no doubt subject to individual, local and/or social variation. Kostaki mou (talk) 20:45, 28 February 2017 (UTC)