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Twat is a vulgar term for a woman’s privates.

In the annals of obloquy, when ranking crudity and rudeness, twat is not quite as offensive as the word cunt.

Click to link to my essay on the etymology of the word cunt.

Almost all legitimate dictionaries, including the Oxford English Dictionary and the Unabridged Merriam-Webster, mark the rude slang word as “of obscure origin” or “origin unknown.” I don’t think so. My personal etymological proposal below is clear, cogent and concise.

The word twat is related to the Old Norse word thveit ‘a piece of land’ but literally in Old Norse ‘a piece cut off’ or more provocatively for our modern slang word, ‘a place cut up,’ a place of cutting,’ ‘a place cut off.’ The Old Norse verb thvita ‘to cut off’ had a relative in Old English thwitan ‘to cut off.’

By this explanation, a twat is a woman’s “cut,”a woman’s piece. Twat may hark back to an ancient chauvinist notion of the most ignorant anatomy in which primitive men, observing female genitals, thought the pudendum was the wound site of something cut off by nature, namely a penis! Similar thoughts abide in modern slang terms like gash.

And, although Freud’s ‘penis envy’ has been repudiated by most psychiatrists as an artifact of rather oinky Viennese provenance, we know from some vaginal words in other languages that this was a not uncommon notion in the minds of the ruling primitive men who made some of the world’s earliest words and thought some of the world’s earliest primitive thoughts.

We have existing evidence of Old Norse thveit becoming Scots twat in the Scottish place name discussed below.

 

A Piece of Land

Thveit meaning ‘a piece of land’ appears in quite a few British place names and subsequent surnames:

Applethwaite – an old term for orchard

Crossingthwaite – a piece of land where two roads met, then a surname based on the fact that the founding ancestor of the family had a farm at such a crossroads.

In the British counties of North Lancashire and Cumbria abound many such surnames: Dowthwaite, Ormthwaite and Seathwaite.

I once wrote a short story that featured a British family with an exceedingly tiny farm which they had nevertheless managed to pass down through several generations. Their ancestral surname was Pizzlethwaite. They possessed a field the size of a bull’s penis. A pizzle is, among other things, a whip made from a bull’s penis. In form pizzle is a dialectic diminutive of the root in piss and pisser.

 

Morphological Bits

For the twait/thwaite/twat alterations, consider that lost aspiration (losing the /h/ in /th/) is common across related languages and dialects. Look at cognates, words sprung from the same Indo-European root word, with initial Old Norse /t/ and Germanic /t/ or /d/ and English /th/

for example:

1. English thunder, German Donner, Norwegian torden (literally ‘Thor’s din’ that is ‘Thor’s noise’). Thor was the chief god of the Viking pantheon and thunder was the sound of the chief god bellowing his echoic anger across the heavens.

2. English thick, German dick, Norse tykk.

3. English thing, German Dinge, Norwegian ting

 

Twatt Bids You Welcome!

Twatt is a Scottish village a few miles north of Stromness in Orkney. Its name is Old Norse, brought to those northern isles by the Vikings. The root is thveite and Old English had either a cognate or, more likely, a derivative thwite, later thwaite which meant a piece of ground cleared of trees and ready to be pasture or a farmer’s field. A thwaite might also be cleared land upon which to build a house. 

Varia

Twat has other, related meanings. However the currently circulating urban word myth that twat originally meant ‘a pregnant goldfish’ has no etymological merit or ichthyological validity.

Twat is used to mean fool, as a synonym for twit.

Twash

Some English dialects have twash as an alternate form, meaning fool or female genitalia.

Twat Comet

From the rather torrid jargon of bizarre sex shows comes a phrase new to me: twat comet. This is apparently anything expelled from a vagina at high speed. It is said voles are placed within milady’s pudendum and then, by means of vaginal muscular contractions, the tiny field mice are shot with daunting velocity outward, to the general delight and applause of persons who pay to view such phenomena. I shall conclude today’s twatological excursus by stating clearly that Wanda & Her Amazing Voles is not an act that will replace the magician and his hat at my next summer fair.

 

Copyright © 2012 William Gordon Casselman

 

 

 

Any comments, additional word lore or book orders?

Please email me at wordguy@shaw.ca

 

 

 

Reviews of my Book

Click bookcover for preview

 

 

 

A Great New Review of My Latest Book!

October 26, 2011

Welcome to the Enchanted Forest

By WB Johnston

This review is about Bill Casselman’s latest e-book about words: Where a Dobdob Meets a Dikdik: A Word Lover’s Guide to the Weirdest, Wackiest, and Wonkiest Lexical Gems (Kindle Edition)

“Wade Davis, lately of National Geographic, once described each living language as “an old-growth forest of the human spirit.” Once you decide to enter the kleptomaniacal woods of our mother tongue, what you need is more than a tour guide. This is no Disney-fied ‘keep-your-hands-inside-the-car-at all-times’, point A to point B, clear-cutting mining of language. You, here, are in the hands of Sir William of Cassel, a genuine shaman modestly posing as a simple lover of words.

In the best of the spiritual tradition, Bill is the shape-shifter who constantly leads you to all the places you need to find in your soul. Every page is a new country, an invitation to an excursion into the wonderland of rich connections with the myriad of sources of what so often we unthinkingly wield as a prosaic tool.

Pay absolutely no attention to anyone who tells you that this book is anything but pure gold. It’s simply not true, sadly, that all the world loves a lover. Particularly someone whose love is so boundless.

But Sir William is fearless. You don’t earn your keep as a medicine man if you have a thin skin. While I cannot for the life of me understand how anyone could walk away from this book unmoved by its wit, its wisdom and the beautiful transparency by which the author celebrates the glorious romp of our almost unlimited linguistic exuberance, I have to sadly conclude that once in a while, you do meet someone who can’t see the forest for the trees, eh?

Read this book. Leave it on the sofa instead of the $%#!*$% TV remote. Maybe someone you care about will pick it up, even just for a moment, and fall in love with their heritage?

Leave it on your desk at work and trust that someone will riffle through it when you are out at lunch. Shamans are magicians of the highest order. The work of their hands and hearts is game-changing. Or, hey, put it on your Kindle and just feel comforted that you can wander back out into the forest with Bill even in the middle of a boring lecture.

Enjoy.”

 (Casselman replies: Thank you so much, Dr. J., for the kudos.)

 

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Jenni French of San Fancisco, California writes on her blog “My Corner of the Universe” for March 19, 2011:

Casselman, Bill. Where a Dobdob Meets a Dikdik: A World Lover’s Guide to the Weirdest, Wackiest, and Wonkiest Lexical Gems. Avon, MA: Adams Media, 2010.

“I admit it: I’m a word nerd. I love words: weird words, long words, obscure words, funny words.  This book is right up my alley.  With chapters like “Nautical Words,” “Creepy Words,” and “Edible Words,” I have enjoyed every page of this book. 

And the author has quite a way with words, so I have found myself rereading many sentences in this book and slowing my progress through it. 

My current favorite sentence is found in a discussion of dog hybrid breed names: “What a revolting concatenation of cutesiness and smarmy nomenclatorial treacle parading under the name of canine hybrid breed names” (19).

I’m sure I’ll have another favorite sentence in a day or two. 

This book is just that good and just that entertaining.”

(Author Bill Casselman replies: “Thanks, Jenni!” )

Just a reminder that this book contains my ALL-NEW word esssays, none of which are available anywhere else in print or online.

 

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Cindy Lapeña on her blog “Creativity Unlimited” of July 19 ,2011, writes:

Posted by mimrlith in 365 Things to Look Forward to.
Tags: 365 things to look forward to, books, reading

19. Starting a book

To a certified bibliophile like me, a.k.a. bookworm, one of the most exciting things to look forward to is to start reading a new book. In fact, sometimes the prospect of starting to read a new book is so exciting that I have to hurry to finish the book I am currently reading, just so I can start a new one.

If there’s one thing I can’t resist, it’s a book, especially if it promises to be a good one. Of course there are certain books I just won’t touch or be seen with, but at the risk of being hung by my thumbs by fans of such literature, I will not mention any genres in particular. . .

Seeing a book with a title that totally captivates me, like Where a Dobdob meets a Dikdik (yes, that is a book title!) has me so worked up, I just can’t wait to dive in. I imagine all sorts of deliciously fancifully outrageous words with a title like that. Is it obvious? I just love books on words. You won’t believe how many dictionaries I own. Or books on lexical oddities and other lexical explorations. Yes, I am a logophile of sorts. I love the new words I pick up from new books. I relish finding out the meanings of all manner of words and phrases and expressions. What could be more fun?”

(Replies author Bill Casselman: Please scroll to bottom of page or click here to link to a free seven-page preview of my book, Where a Dobdob Meets a Dikdik.

 

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Testimonial Email

Thursday, February 3, 2011

Dear Mr. Casselman,
A search for the origins of an improbable-looking word, paraprosdokian, led me to the first piece of your prose I have had the pleasure of reading, “The Bogus Word Paraprosdokian & Lazy Con Artists of Academe.” I have just placed an order for Where a Dobdob Meets a Dikdik, Canadian Words & Sayings, and As The Canoe Tips, and will add more of your titles as I finish these.

I have just retired from a 40-plus year career in book publishing, the last thirty years spent as director/editor of a number of university presses, attempting to sort the genuine writers from the “Lazy Con Artists of Academe.” Sad to say, the latter have so over-bred the former that I could no longer see the rare gem in the avalanches of offal that daily swamped my office and desk. I visited your website and spent far too long there; it was a pleasure to meet a real writer through his work.

. . . I revisited the paraprosdokian page, and have finally quit laughing again at “Casselman’s Conclusion.” You were not unkind to the “profligate prof-lets.” During my years as an acquisitions editor, in rejection letters I often quoted Prof. Moses Hadas, classicist at Columbia University, who wrote a young scholar in response to having been sent the prof-let’s first book, “Thank you for sending me your book. I will waste no time reading it.”

I know I will enjoy your books. Keep up the good work.

Thank you,
Luther Wilson
Director (Retired)
University of New Mexico Press, among others

 

 

 

 

 

 

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