Cunt!

[Darkniciad]

I'm of the same opinion as many in the thread. I use it rarely, and almost always in dialouge where it is meant to convey a crude bent of a character. There are a lot of words I use that way, only pulling them out when I need to set a stronger mood or define a character.

The word always pulls me up short whenever I read it in a scene that isn't fairly dark in nature.

 

[Stella_Omega]

I have never considered this until I laid eyes upon this thread. I can understand why many see "cunt" as a grave insult upon the female sex, but there's also a growing number of people who have decided to break the chains of power that surround this taboo word by using it in a more positive way. To me, it represents the cradle of life and is worthy of respect instead of censure.

Damn straight.
According to several anthropologists and lexicographers who's names I cannot remember- the word comes from one of our proto-indo words, "CU" meaning center. We get the word "Cow" from it, and the original word for "Fire" which was so taboo that our current word does NOT come from it.
A taboo word is not profane or vulgar, quite the opposite in fact. It's a word that is too important to be used in everyday speech.

In fact, I have a four-thousand word pean to the word, which I shall now submit- it's an early story, and I was a little unsatisfied with it- but I just re-read it and it's fine...

 

[AchtungNight]

To me "cunt" is like "slut." I thought it was negative at first, then I read stories where it was used in a positive context and I calmed down. Every word's meaning depends on the context- there are very few words out there that are inherently negative or positive. That said, I must say I prefer "pussy" or "snatch" when describing that particular organ. It just sounds cooler, you know? 8)

 

[Aurora Black]

To me "cunt" is like "slut." I thought it was negative at first, then I read stories where it was used in a positive context and I calmed down. Every word's meaning depends on the context- there are very few words out there that are inherently negative or positive. That said, I must say I prefer "pussy" or "snatch" when describing that particular organ. It just sounds cooler, you know? 8)

"Pussy" is my term of choice most of the time, with the occasional use of "flower" when I'm writing something more romantic.

 

[kendo1]

Never use it. Slut too.
I'm an old fashioned guy and I do not like swearing. It shows a lack of vocabulary, as I pointed out to my ex neighbour on a few occassions. Every second word...
Not very polite in front of children, and I would not swear in front of my parents.
Why should anyone else?


Drivers though, are a different kettle of fish.

Ken

 

[Anniejustagirl]

it's a word for me that is very similar in nature to dyke

i am a DYKE! since i have reclaimed this word for myself... even if someone calls me dyke in anger and/or derision... my only response tends to be.... "Thanks for noticing."

i think many women have taken back the word bitch and i think cunt will also be reclaimed in time... yes... it is a powerful word... and the only word that used to make me see red Every single time i heard it used in the offensive....

the turning point for me was the movie... Boys on the Side. Whoopi Goldberg's character, Jane, speaking with Mary-Louise Parker's character, Robin, about how they refer to their genitals... 'who-who' and 'sissy' just do not have the power or show the respect of the powerful word CUNT! The scene ends with Jane and Robin chanting and shouting the word cunt as they reclaim the power of Cunt! i LOVED it! and one of my most respected friends at lit came into a very difficult time and i PMed her and asked after her cunt.... she responded by letting me no what was going on and thanking me for celebrating the word cunt as she too has reclaimed the power of cunt....

go ahead... try to insult me with it.... it's my cunt.... it's my power... and you can't take that from me.... i can only give it away....

and..... i won't!


*heading out the door* cunt.... Cunt.... CUNT!

 

[Equinoxe]

it's a word for me that is very similar in nature to dyke

I nearly said the same thing myself, however, with different intentions.

i am a DYKE! since i have reclaimed this word for myself... even if someone calls me dyke in anger and/or derision... my only response tends to be.... "Thanks for noticing."

Here's where we part: they're similar words in that they are both obnoxious, hideous, grating, cacophonic words that are horrible in sound for what they mean, regardless of the connotations anyone gives them.

 

[Stella_Omega]

I nearly said the same thing myself, however, with different intentions.



Here's where we part: they're similar words in that they are both obnoxious, hideous, grating, cacophonic words that are horrible in sound for what they mean, regardless of the connotations anyone gives them.

I utterly disagree with that! I prefer "Dyke" and "C unt" both- although I don't say the C- word as often as the D-word..

What words do you prefer? I'm not being sarcastic, only interested...

 

[Anniejustagirl]

I nearly said the same thing myself, however, with different intentions.



Here's where we part: they're similar words in that they are both obnoxious, hideous, grating, cacophonic words that are horrible in sound for what they mean, regardless of the connotations anyone gives them.

They are beautiful, comforting, empowering, breath-taking words.... i am a Dyke.... a beautifully amazingly powerful dyke..... with a strong and fruitful cunt....

and once again we part.... and that's all right.....

 

[Nirvanadragones]

I don't like the word.

Dyke I like, but there are very specific reasons for that which brings me to believe that I might change my mind about other words I do not like - depending on the meaning I attach to them.

Just call me a word-slut

 

[Equinoxe]

I utterly disagree with that! I prefer "Dyke" and "C unt" both- although I don't say the C- word as often as the D-word..

What words do you prefer? I'm not being sarcastic, only interested...

I just find them very harsh, unpleasant sounds -- and they're not especially pretty in an orthographic sense, either. If someone were to coin the word grapfblakvig and assign it the meaning of the most wonderful and amazing thing a human being is capable of imagining, it would still be a hideous word.

This is where the problem lies, though (and I was just discussing this with someone): there are no euphonic or pleasing words for either. I find them to be ugly words to describe beautiful concepts. The words which bother me the least are those which perhaps have the least colour to them, like vagina and lesbian. Of those, the latter is more euphonic, but my problems with it are etymological and historical. To wit, lesbian derives from the Isle of Lesbos, vis-à-vis the Lesbian poet Sappho, who was most likely not a lesbian in the modern context: and furthermore, in the Classical World, Lesbos was known more for sexual acts which, suffice it to say, lesbians are not known for. Now, the word vagina has all sorts of other problems, in addition to the fact that it is not especially pleasant in sound, including the fact that it's not really anatomically accurate. So that would leave vulva, but that's no good either.

*sigh*

There are no good words for the concepts, at least in English.

Obviously, all of this might explain why I haven't written anything for Lit.

 

[Selena_Kitt]

Selena, what you said was spot on, and so fucking sexy!

Hey, thanks Lou!

*somebody noticed me* LOL

 

[Selena_Kitt]

*heading out the door* cunt.... Cunt.... CUNT!

Totally reminds me of a scene in the movie "Boys on the Side"... anyone else see that one? Whoopi Goldberg's character is trying to get Marie Louise Parker's character to say the C-word... love that movie...

Personally, I think it's better than a "sissy" or a "hoo-hoo"...

although we do use the term "yoni" as well as "muffin" with my 5 yo daughter...

edited to add: Doh! that's what I get for not reading the WHOLE post... LOL... still love that movie

 

[S-Des]

I was reading SK's new series and was amused to see the word about a half-dozen times during a particularly hot sex scene. She just pisses me off how well she writes. The word perfectly conveyed a sense of eroticism and the taboo nature of the encounter. It made me feel more involved with the characters and how aroused they all were by what was happening.

It's kind of like fashion. Some people can dress in something edgy and look amazing, some of us just look stupid. Good writers who have the right feel for an erotic situation use it to make a good scene even better. If I did it, it would probably just look stupid.

 

[Selena_Kitt]

I was reading SK's new series and was amused to see the word about a half-dozen times during a particularly hot sex scene. She just pisses me off how well she writes. The word perfectly conveyed a sense of eroticism and the taboo nature of the encounter. It made me feel more involved with the characters and how aroused they all were by what was happening.

It's kind of like fashion. Some people can dress in something edgy and look amazing, some of us just look stupid. Good writers who have the right feel for an erotic situation use it to make a good scene even better. If I did it, it would probably just look stupid.

I use it all the time... for me, it's interchangeable with "pussy" and a lot of the times preferable...it's just HOTTER, damnit... I guess I'm past my issues about it that I used to have at one time... and I did have them... gone now...

although on a personal note, I like "puss"... especially when I'm playing kitty... "Do you want to pet my little puss?" makes him crazy... esp when I say it in my baby-girl voice...

 

[Munachi]

Interesting discussion, and interesting word. One I have thought about for a while.

To me, cunt has a nice and positive sound - even though I know it's not supposed to, it has. The thing is, I first learned this word from an ex-boyfriend, who used it usually in a sexual context (there both for the body part and as a name) and that is what I associate with it. Had I been a native speaker of English maybe I would have gotten quite angry at him, but since I am not... I just got to like the word.

In German, though, the word "Votze" is probably the equivalent to "cunt". It has the same meaning, and it is seen as a very bad word. And I strongly dislike it. It sounds ugly and degrading. This is obviously due to associations.

Interestingly according to my dictionary the Spanish word "coño" also means cunt or Votze. So I was quite shocked when my Cuban salsa-teacher said just that every time I made a mistake. But I learned that in some countries like Spain, Venezuela, and I suppose also Cuba, coño is quite a common thing to say. Still for some reason I like the sound of "cunt" better than that of "coño".

In the end, though, it's all down to associations we have with a word. I must disagree with those that say the word "cunt" in itself sounds ugly. I don't think it does...

 

[Munachi]

on the other hand, for example, i don't like the sound of the word "pussy" nor of the closest german equivalent "muschi" (which even has the same double meaning with cat)...

 

[Munachi]

a bit more about sounds and how we are trained to find certain sounds ugly:

since a few here mentioned "cacophonic" sound - in Romanian, all combination of the syllables "ca", "co" and "ca" with a little sign on the a which makes it sound like a bit of a schwa sound, is considered cacofonie and thus ugly. a romanian will put a word in between if one word ends with ca and the next starts with co. like, instead of "ca cand" (like when) he'll say "ca atunci cand" (like then when) to avoid that sound.

having learned this, it now throws me off all the time when i speak spanish. I want to say "que calor", for example, and after the "que" i find myself searching for a word to put in between, because i have "learned" that the sound of "que ca..." is ugly.

so, just another point on that the beauty or ugliness of sounds has a lot to do with training...

 

[Maria2394]

once upon a time, I was carrying a 50 lb bag of dog food out of the winn dixie, ( yes, I do have muscles and fifty pounds isnt that much anyway)) and two young men, probably in the range of early twenties were entering the store as I exited...one of them looked at me and said quite loudly,

fuckin' Dyke!!

I turned and looked at him and said, ya better shut up or I will get my GF to beat your ass...

now, Im not a lesbian, but I couldnt resist. He looked scared and shut up fast, lol

personally, if a man calls me a cunt, it just means he knows he aint getting none of mine so I just ignore him. means he has low self esteem and probably didnt get past the 4th grade anyway...

 

[Equinoxe]

a bit more about sounds and how we are trained to find certain sounds ugly:

since a few here mentioned "cacophonic" sound - in Romanian, all combination of the syllables "ca", "co" and "ca" with a little sign on the a which makes it sound like a bit of a schwa sound, is considered cacofonie and thus ugly. a romanian will put a word in between if one word ends with ca and the next starts with co. like, instead of "ca cand" (like when) he'll say "ca atunci cand" (like then when) to avoid that sound.

having learned this, it now throws me off all the time when i speak spanish. I want to say "que calor", for example, and after the "que" i find myself searching for a word to put in between, because i have "learned" that the sound of "que ca..." is ugly.

so, just another point on that the beauty or ugliness of sounds has a lot to do with training...

That is true, though much of it is merely personal taste, and it does not, necessarily, have anything to do with semantic content of the word in question. A famous example being the words "cellar door" as a beautiful, mellifluous sound -- which was proposed by Tolkien, who, in case anyone was wondering, supposedly at a somewhat younger age coined the word huch (translating as cunnus) in Quenya, though that's so out of date as to be incompatible with the phonology of the language as it developed. I think it would either be pronounced something like /huːç/ or /huːx/, but I don't know.

In English, for the most part, Latinate words have, historically, been encouraged over their Anglo-Saxon counterparts (despite the advice mentioned earlier from Churchill to use the Germanic root words). People are not especially taught to avoid certain phonologically valid sound combinations, like your Romanian example (that's ca and că, with co?), though people are certainly encouraged to use or not use specific words, though more from a perspective of meaning (as with the debate of this thread as a whole) or with regard to maturity (certain words being considered childish) or social station.


If you do not mind the compliment, you seem to be quite the hyperpolyglot.

 

[infinity706]

I like the word cunt a lot. It's a powerful word that commands attention.

 

[Sex and Death]

In the minority... again...

I wrote a poem about it once... Semantics?

The words don't matter... it's the intent and the love (or not) behind them... I can be completely swept away sometimes when he pins me to the wall on his way out the door and puts his hand between my legs and says, "Tonight, I'm going to fuck that hot, wet cunt until you can't walk!"

Being called a cunt by someone I don't know? Entirely different story...

I would most likely also be pinning against the wall any other person who called you a cunt. They would most assuredly be very fucked, too.

~S&D

 

[Munachi]

That is true, though much of it is merely personal taste, and it does not, necessarily, have anything to do with semantic content of the word in question. A famous example being the words "cellar door" as a beautiful, mellifluous sound -- which was proposed by Tolkien, who, in case anyone was wondering, supposedly at a somewhat younger age coined the word huch (translating as cunnus) in Quenya, though that's so out of date as to be incompatible with the phonology of the language as it developed. I think it would either be pronounced something like /huːç/ or , but I don't know.

In English, for the most part, Latinate words have, historically, been encouraged over their Anglo-Saxon counterparts (despite the advice mentioned earlier from Churchill to use the Germanic root words). People are not especially taught to avoid certain phonologically valid sound combinations, like your Romanian example (that's ca and că, with co?), though people are certainly encouraged to use or not use specific words, though more from a perspective of meaning (as with the debate of this thread as a whole) or with regard to maturity (certain words being considered childish) or social station.


If you do not mind the compliment, you seem to be quite the hyperpolyglot.

though I would think even personal taste has a lot to do with what you are used to. if your language uses certain types of sound very often you will feel differently about them than someone whose language doesn't use them. my own language has a reputation for being ugly, and while i often have my difficulties with it (more due to the fact that i tend to want to be somewhere else), i don't think it really is - the "ugly" sounds of german to me are normal and not ugly at all. and meaning plays into it, like, you sometimes can't turn it off. let's say, the phrase "ich liebe dich" - to many non-germans it sounds horrible, because of the repeated hissing sounds in it. i doubt any german would find it ugly though, because there are positive things associated with the phrase, and because this supposed hissing sound is something germans hear and pronounce every day...

hm this reminds me, the other day someone told me a joke about the word butterfly/mariposa/schmetterling - before that it never even occured to me that schmetterling might not be a nice sounding word to someone - and again, that is associations of the meaning of the word, and maybe also the meaning of "schmettern" playing into it.

of course you are right, that there is also individual taste. for example, i don't like combinations of the letters U+L. which is a bit weird, as i have these letters in my own name, and it makes me dislike the sound of my name... there are a few more sounds that i also dislike, even though they are quite common in my language, and most people think i am weird to dislike them... so yes, i guess for some people the word cunt could really sound ugly without that it has to do with connotations. though it's not that the word is ugly in itself, even then, but it is ugly just to those people.

about tolkien, i didn't quite understand you there... btw, there is a german word that is spelled "huch" - it is an expression of surprise. unfortunately i don't know IPA and similar systems, but i think the pronunciation should be something like /huːx/...

As for the romanian, there it is any combination of ca, că and co (i.e. ca că, ca co, co că etc.). this obviously has to do with various words for poo, and pooing - but these words exist in other langauges too (like in german it would be kacken) without that it creates such restrictions in the language. i sometimes wonder how this emerged...

 

[Munachi]

oh, and forgot to say thanks for the compliment. i like languages and try to learn as many as i can, though so far they aren't that many at all...

 

[Equinoxe]

though I would think even personal taste has a lot to do with what you are used to. if your language uses certain types of sound very often you will feel differently about them than someone whose language doesn't use them. my own language has a reputation for being ugly, and while i often have my difficulties with it (more due to the fact that i tend to want to be somewhere else), i don't think it really is - the "ugly" sounds of german to me are normal and not ugly at all. and meaning plays into it, like, you sometimes can't turn it off. let's say, the phrase "ich liebe dich" - to many non-germans it sounds horrible, because of the repeated hissing sounds in it. i doubt any german would find it ugly though, because there are positive things associated with the phrase, and because this supposed hissing sound is something germans hear and pronounce every day...

hm this reminds me, the other day someone told me a joke about the word butterfly/mariposa/schmetterling - before that it never even occured to me that schmetterling might not be a nice sounding word to someone - and again, that is associations of the meaning of the word, and maybe also the meaning of "schmettern" playing into it.

That is certainly true and many sounds or combinations of sounds may seem strange or ugly to an individual based upon their language. For example, combinations of nk (like in many Bantu languages) or ng (like in Vietnamese) at the beginning of a word would seem exotic, at the very least, to an English speaker, because English words do not generally begin with those sounds. It is true that German is not considered an attractive language to most (at least English speakers), although one of my favourite sounds, as far as language goes, is actually the ich-Laut. I like those "hissing" sounds.

Not knowing the meaning of schmettern, I really can't speak to that, though of those three, I would prefer mariposa: but perhaps that's the Anglophone fondness for Latinate sounds speaking.

of course you are right, that there is also individual taste. for example, i don't like combinations of the letters U+L. which is a bit weird, as i have these letters in my own name, and it makes me dislike the sound of my name... there are a few more sounds that i also dislike, even though they are quite common in my language, and most people think i am weird to dislike them... so yes, i guess for some people the word cunt could really sound ugly without that it has to do with connotations. though it's not that the word is ugly in itself, even then, but it is ugly just to those people.

I do not care for the combination of the letters b and l myself. Which I had not realised the other day until I was trying to write something and I ended up just staring at the screen at the word "black" and it didn't look "right" (which is, of course, nonsense since it is right).

I would be inclined to agree that there is nothing inherently ugly about the word, phonologically speaking, but merely that to some (myself included) it is an unpleasant sound. I would find any idea of inherently ugly sounds to be suspect: though there is probably a scientist somewhere who has done a study which found that some percentage of a sampled population population, likely no more than 60, prefers certain sounds, which will be claimed as an inherent natural human preference for those sounds (conveniently ignoring the sizeable minority who don't fit).

about tolkien, i didn't quite understand you there... btw, there is a german word that is spelled "huch" - it is an expression of surprise. unfortunately i don't know IPA and similar systems, but i think the pronunciation should be something like /huːx/...

It's a bit a of tangent, though it's actually relevant in many respects. Firstly, the example of the words "cellar door" as a euphonic sound combination, removed from the meaning and spelling of it. Secondly, an example of a term--meaning, without the connotations, the title of this thread--coined by him in a language he invented which was designed to be "beautiful" from his perspective (which, incidentally, does make use of a sound approximating the ich-Laut). Of course, he didn't especially care for French, which many English speakers find to be a "beautiful" language. Again, the personal preference, as well as familiarity, history, and politics coming into play.

As for the romanian, there it is any combination of ca, că and co (i.e. ca că, ca co, co că etc.). this obviously has to do with various words for poo, and pooing - but these words exist in other langauges too (like in german it would be kacken) without that it creates such restrictions in the language. i sometimes wonder how this emerged...

The meaning hadn't even occurred to me prior to your mentioning it, but that does make some sense.

oh, and forgot to say thanks for the compliment. i like languages and try to learn as many as i can, though so far they aren't that many at all...

You're very welcome. I am fascinated by languages myself, but I have not managed to learn many, merely parts of a few. Though the absence of quality learning materials is largely the cause of that. (And this post has become quite long)