Talk:poppyhead

Greek

according to the μήκων page, this word means poppyhead in the architectural sense in Greek. If so, that's evidence in favor of the etymology of this word deriving from the name of the flower after all. However, this architectural style seems to have developed in England, or at least northern Europe, so Greek might have just decided to use a cultural loan; it's also possible that our μήκων entry is mistaken and that the word only means poppyhead in the botanical sense. and i should have noticed earlier that it's listed under ancient Greek, whereas the modern architectural sense seems to have developed fairly recently. —Soap— 02:18, 30 May 2023 (UTC)

As per talk:μήκων, I believe this may have been a mistake made by the compilers of classical literature. The passage on Perseus that is used to cite the word apparently doesn't contain it, and also seems to be about an unrelated subject. If, as I suspect, μήκων never meant poppyhead in the architectural sense, that's one more argument in favor of English not getting the term from the name of the flower, though I suspect we'll never really know. —Soap— 12:18, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

the poop theory

This 1897 dictionary claims what I was too embarrassed to say ... that poop was once the word for poppyhead, and a euphemism may have driven out the original form after the word poop came into usage as the primary childhood word for feces. Curiously, the 1897 dictionary doesnt even list feces as a meaning for poop. It could be that the dictionary was already outdated when it was published, and may have relied mostly on older sources. It could be that poop in its modern sense is much newer than I realized. Or it could be that they just chose not to list such words in their dictionary, in order to focus more on academic subjects. Anyway, my first explanation would fit best with my theory, because the word poppyhead in its modern sense was well established by 1897, and a book printed (I think) in the 1800s already can only speculate that it came from the French poupe. —Soap— 21:28, 2 July 2023 (UTC)

And the 1989 Webster's Dictionary of the English Language: Encyclopedic Edition, for all its pomp, doesnt list poop (or poo) in the familiar sense either, so there may be a bit of "Hmmph! This is a serious dictionary, young man!" attitude common to all academic dictionaries that would explain its absence despite the fact that it would take very little space on the page to list it. Therefore it may be that poop in the modern sense is not such a new word after all, which would help explain why it is used all over the English-speaking world with the same meaning. —Soap— 17:51, 4 July 2023 (UTC)