A term for the female genitals, and a highly insulting term (if you're American; many people in Britain and Austrailia actually use it among frends as a term of endearment).
"Pudenda" is used more often and concidered aomewhat less "value-laden", but it'
s often overlooked that "pudenda" comes from "pudendum", which means "shameful part"; many societies see the vulva as unclean and/or shameful, but there's nothing shameful about the female genitals. "Cunt" is a native English word (and there
aren't many of those) It goes back to an Old Germanic stem "kunton".
It
may have arose by Grimm's
law operating on the Proto-Indo-European root gen/gon = "create, become"
seen in gonads, genital, gamete, genetics,
gene, or the Proto-Indo-European root gwne/gune = "woman"
seen in gynaecology. The prefix 'cu' is one of the oldest word-sounds in recorded language. It is an expression quintessentially associated with femininity, and is the basis of '
cow' ('female animal'), '
queen' ('female monarch'), and, of course, 'cunt' ('female genital'). The word's second most significant influence is the
Latin term 'cuneus', meaning '
wedge', from which comes 'cunnus' ('vagina').
Sadly, this ancient word has been abused so much, and has been used against women very often.
Cunt in other languages:
Albanian: pidh, piçkë
Czech: píca, kunda
French: con; putain, salope; salaud, saligaud
Dutch: kut; trut, muts; lul, eikel
Finnish: vittu
German: Fotze
Italian: figa, fica; stronza; stronzo, bastardo
Latin: cunnus
Malaysian: puki
Norwegian: fitte
Polish: pizda, cipa, cipsko
Portuguese: conas
Romanian: pizda
Russian: pizdá
Scottish Gaelic: pit
Slovak: pica
Spanish: chocha, chucha, coño, concha, cuca, puta, cabrón, hijueputa, malparido,
Swedish: fitta
Turkish: am