Asses are Made to Bear...

...quoth the Bard. It's true. In Taming of the Shrew, upon the initial meeting of Petruchio and Katharina (Kate), Petruchio invites Kate to come sit upon his lap. The Bard was such a dirty old man. Anyway, Kate responds to Petruchio's request with "Asses are made to bear, and so are you." I'm sure there was a little of that famous Shakespearean double-speak going on here, where Kate was not only pointing out that Petruchio was an ass, but he was also telling us how we should see more shapely buttocks flaunted in the open.

This all brings us to today's word. It's one of my favorites. I'm sure you've heard it before, maybe even used it. I know I've written it here. I must thank my friend, Asian Jim, for teaching me this word. This one is for you, Asian Jim (if you still read this).

callipygian: "kal-uh-pidge-ee-uhn" adjective pertaining to or having beautiful buttocks.

This word comes from Greek, kalli meaning "beautiful" and puge meaning buttocks. It shows up in the middle of the seventeenth century (so, well after Shakespeare tells us that asses should be bared) and originally was used in reference of a statue of Aphrodite, the Ancient Greek goddess of love, beauty and desire. In Rome, they called her Venus.

You can probably see why this is one of my favorite words in the English language, and why I thank Asian Jim so much for teaching it to me. Thanks, buddy.

Anyway, I know exactly where this is going. There's a certain young princess that will have her "callipygian curves" described, most likely in reference to the spray of sea water on her garments, causing them to cling tenaciously to her skin. That is, if she's wearing clothes at all at that point. I haven't decided yet. We'll see.

So, the next time you see some attractive young woman walking down the street with "Juicy" written across her ass, now you know how to describe it--providing she's over 18, that is. Pervert.

But wait...there's more!

In the course of looking up the etymology of the word, I stumbled across a few others, and I just have to share them with you. Mostly because I'm twisted like that.

The opposite of callipygian is cacopygian, meaning "having an ugly buttocks", coming from kakos meaning "bad, evil" and the aforementioned puge.

A related form is steatopygous, meaning "having a prominent or fat buttocks", this time coming from stear or steat, meaning "tallow, fat" and puge.

And then there is possibly my new favorite word that I've learned in the past ten minutes, dasypygal, meaning "having a hairy buttocks", coming from Greek dasus with the meaning of "hair, dense" and puge. Awesome.

So, there you go. Four words for the price of one, all of them related to your sweet ass. Wait a second. I'm not sure if this word exists or not, but I'm going to try and take credit for coining glycopygian, meaning "having a sweet ass" (glycys being Greek for "sweet").

Words are awesome.