…hand? Or, whatever you want really, but again, like yesterday, you can imagine that I’m thinking of something else. Because yesterday I got a good firm grasp of how we use synonyms for penises as insults, now I want to do the same thing from a female perspective. Well, not really from a female perspective I suppose.
You can imagine any word you like to finish that sentence. Personally, I’m thinking of a few different words. Words that all have two things in common: they can be used to insult a man, and refer to the male sexual organ (so be forewarned: if you’re sensitive to bad language, I’ll be swinging a lot of it round willy-nilly in the next few paragraphs).
What English could really benefit from is a standard diminutive form. Many other languages have at least one common way to transform a noun into a dimunitive form, usually by adding a suffix. In French you can add -ette or -ot, Spanish often uses -ina or -ino, Portuguese the similar -inha or -inho, and Italian has a variety such as -etta/-etto and -ino/-ina.
Of course, English borrows some diminutive words from Latin languages, such as featurette, operetta, caipirinha, and duckling/gosling (from Norse). And many specific forms of English feature unique diminutive forms. Scots for example, has quite a few, mainly from older forms of English and Scottish Gaelic. Some words used in Ireland are influenced by the Irish Gaelic diminutive -ín. It’s fairly common for a male baby to be described as a cute little maneen. A country lane might be called a boreen, from the word bóithrín (from bóthair [road] + –ín).
English used to have standard diminutive forms, evidence of which we can still see today. Continue reading
English-Language Thoughts 