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Poupoune — A Québec Word in the News

 

“Bernier et sa poupoune” was a phrase in almost every Quebec newspaper this week in May 2008. The story referred to Maxime Bernier, Canada’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, dating une belle poitrine, a big-breasted bimbo with alleged, former ties to Hell’s Angels and to organized crime syndicates that control many of Canada’s ports.

Bernier’s “bimboozlement” was merely his latest idiot’s flub. Press-dubbed Mad Max, he's one of several “empty suits” our Canadian Prime Minister Harper has placed in sensitive portfolios inside his Marx Brothers cabinet to appease, in this case, Québec voters. Bernier is well-known in Ottawa circles to be cute but stupid. The porch light is on, but there is nobody home. The gaffe-prone stumblebum is due to be shuffled out of his near-mortal coils this fall during the next cabinet change. Even fellow Tories vilipend Bernier, saying Max has always been more interested in big tits than in the contents of the federal portfolios he has been appointed to superintend.

Playboy Bernier is yet another of Stephen Harper's bad choices in people. Harper cares more about cabinet ministers too frightened to speak out until they have received the born-again imprimatur from the PMO. He keeps appointing rocket scientists like The Honourable Beverley J. Oda, Minister of International Cooperation. Nicknamed Yoda by an adoring press gallery, Bev will do well in her government assignment — as soon as she can figure out the trickier aspects of her portfolio, such as where France is. In any comparison of Bev's I.Q with that of a beach pebble, I'm afraid that, after the results were announced, there would be dancing on the sand.

Thus it’s no great surprise that Bernier would date some sleazy, twin-48” doll to whom he may have whispered national security secrets during mammolatrous pillowtalk at the Motel des Rêves. I must confess puzzlement about what precisely might constitute a breach of Canadian national security. Revealing the recipe for Vanilla Maple Syrup? Divulging the name of Stéphane Dion’s ‘English Accent Modification’ Instructor?

Sorry, in that last paragraph I did have to coin a new word. Mammolatry is the undue worship of tits, long after their nutritive use in infancy has passed. The exquisite neology is formed on the analogy of idololatry, where the terminal root in the compound is latreia, a Greek word for devoted service or even servility that verges on worship.

We will leave Stephen Harper’s appointment of this common fool to a high cabinet post for another day’s hard writhing. Today, class, we focus on the interesting Quebec term poupoune.

 

 

UPDATE: Maxine Bernier Forced to Resign

May 26, 2008

Maxime Bernier, Minister of Foreign Affairs, had his errant ass fired out of federal cabinet today by a furious Prime Minister Stephen Harper. Bernier carelessly left top-secret government documents in the bedroom of his part-time floozie, a woman closely linked to organized crime and biker gangs as recently as 2005. The gargantuan-breasted gun moll was about to go on Quebec television and blab everything, so Harper had to terminate the handsome but dumb Quebecker —clear evidence of yet another bad cabinet choice made by Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

 

La Poupoune Anatomized — Linguistically

Poupoune’s closest English equivalent is “babe” or “chick” with the same dismissive sexist undertone. For example, Paris Hilton has been labeled disapprovingly “une poupoune” in Québec newspapers. The slang term suggests a girl with too much make-up, a bit of a tart, a trashy broad. Its employment as a putdown is almost always by female reporters who are jealous of the poupoune or by male writers seeking to disguise their lust for the poupoune.

Pejoration

But, like many popular words of insult, there are subtle degrees of semantic depreciation in the use of poupoune. Pejoration is the linguistic technical word describing the development of multiple negative connotations in a word’s use. Here’s a Québec usage that is not quite as insulting as a meaning of babe: “Le salon de coiffure est toujours rempli de poupounes. Pas pour les gars.” — The beauty salon is always jammed with chicks. It’s no place for guys.

Amelioration

Historically, as a bit of slang, poupoune also has undergone amelioration. In one of its meanings, poupoune has improved, so-to-speak. Les poupounes first referred to the buttocks, the bum. Its prime slang usage then was more equivalent to low English like ‘a nice piece of ass.’ In general poupoune has improved its social acceptability to mean ‘chick’ or ‘babe.’ But the linguistic inception of the form was much more vulgar.

Morphology of the Word poupoune

In words coined in Québécois French, - oune is a very productive noun suffix appended to reduplicated noun stems, as in Quebec forms like baboune, chouchoune, doudoune, foufounes, gougounes, moumoune, nounoune, poupoune and toutoune.

Etymology of the Word poupoune

The first use in Québec print of the word is in a plural form: les poupounes where it meant ‘the buttocks’ or ‘the bum.’ I suggest that in origin poupounes sprang up as a playful variant of another Quebec word for buttocks, namely the nursery term les foufounes ‘bum, buttocks.’ In Indo-European languages the change of initial /f/ to /p/ is common both intralingually and extralingually. The IE root meaning father appears in its Latin reflex as pater, in Sanskrit as pitar, but in its Germanic reflexes as fader, vader, and English father. It's Fisch in German, but pisces in Latin. Both words for fish stem from the same IE root. An initial unvoiced fricative like /f/ is a frequent variant candidate to become an unvoiced plosive like /p/ inside one language (e.g. Pa and Papa and Pop for father, but Ma for mother) and across dialects of the same language or across the wide range of Indo-European languages.

The Suffix –oune in Québec Slang

 Let’s examine some of these slang words where the suffix may be affectionate or disparaging.

La baboune is moping or pouting, as in faire la baboune ‘to be sullen’, to look like someone pissed in your Corn Flakes this morning. Awwww, poor widdle woopy-doop!

Les foufounes are the buttocks, as in this example of kiddy talk:

Enfant : J’ai tombé sur mes foufounes, maman ! Mommy, I fell on my bum!

Mère : Ah, ouin, mais tu n’as pas cassé les ‘tites foufounes?” But you didn’t break your little toosh, did you?

Foufounes finds use in adult slang as well. There used to be a Montreal nightclub called Les Foufounes électriques where no doubt one could watch asses gyrate pendant toute la nuit.

Une guidoune is a whore. Quelle guidoune! What a shameless slut!

La minoune is the slinky, cat-like vixen on the make, perhaps a lady nightclubber who saunters fetchingly past a trio of guys and one of the drooling guys says, “There is no such thing as too short a skirt.”

Moumoune can be a feminine noun or an adjective. It means fey, campy, effeminate. Son fils est une grosse moumoune. His son is nothing but a big fag.

Une pitoune is a showy woman, a babe.

Une toutoune is an affectionate way of referring to a female dog.

 

Et c’est tout pour aujourd’hui, mes enfants.

Copyright © 2008 William Gordon Casselman