How Beaver Became a Dirty Word

First, here’s the news story that prompted today’s search for the origin of a common vulgarity:

Canada history magazine drops double-entendre name

Tue Jan 12, 2010 12:07pm EST

WINNIPEG, Manitoba (Reuters) - Canada’s second-oldest magazine, The Beaver, is changing its name because its unintended sexual connotation has caused the history journal to become snagged in Internet filters and has turned off potential readers.

The Beaver was founded in 1920 as a publication of the Hudson’s Bay Company, then a fur trader and now a department store chain. It has long since become a broader magazine about Canadian history and will change its name to Canada’s History with its April issue, editor-in-chief Mark Reid said on Tuesday.

When The Beaver started publication, the name evoked only Canada’s thriving fur industry. Ninety years later, the fur trade has diminished and the magazine’s name has become slang for female genitals.

Readers complained that Internet filters were blocking emails and newsletters from The Beaver, Reid said. The society also had concerns about attracting readers.

“Market research showed us that younger Canadians and women were very very unlikely to ever buy a magazine called The Beaver no matter what it’s about,” said Reid, adding he has mixed feelings about the name change. “For whatever reasons, they are turned off by the name.”

Print subscriptions to the Winnipeg-based magazine, which publishes six issues a year, range between 45,000 and 50,000. It is published by Canada’s National History Society.

Changing the name also makes sense because the fur trade, while an important part of early Canadian history isn’t meaningful to all Canadians today, especially as the population’s makeup has changed through immigration, Reid said.

Readers have been generally understanding about the need for the change, he said.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. end of Reuters wire copy . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Casselman Update on August 9, 2010 -

The Audit Bureau of Circulation, that collects newstand and subscription sales figures for magazines, reports that in the first six months of 2010, Canada's History suffered a 6.5 percent6 decline in total circulation. to be fair however, one must note that the magazine did not dump the "Beaver" name until its April issue. So it gets at least a one-year reprieve, to see if history outsells beaver.

 

Now, Really,How Beaver Became A Dirty Word

Note that, in reporting the stories, not one of the major Canadian wire services or bold newspapers could even bring themselves to say that “beaver” means vagina in many slang expressions. The newspaper accounts dared not suggest that beaver refers specifically in obscene English slang to female pubic hair. Photographs in porn magazines of the labia spread wide are referred to as “split beaver.” Not one Canadian publication (except perhaps this web site) dared to mention this. Talk about censorship chill! Talk about pussy-footing newspaper suckababies who wonder, with finger in mouth, why newspapers are disappearing! Do you think it might have something to do with the fact that Canadian newspaper censors think all their readers are six years old? Read on.

How did the name of Canada’s beloved totemic rodent, the humble hard-working beaver, zoological name Castor canadensis, how did beaver come to refer to the external genitalia of the human female. How did beaver evolve to be a synonym for pussy?

Although no one knows the certain origin, this has not quelled an uproar of feisty theories.

Beavers have fur and anything furry can become a vulval reference. That is certainly the origin of pussy. Pubic hair like cat’s hair may be stroked.

One jokester said that beaver = pussy because beavers eat wood. Wood and woody are synonyms for the erect penis.

Playboy magazine, years ago, presented, as fact, the hilarious supposition that beaver = pussy because lonely fur trappers in days of yore masturbated with the soft pelt of a beaver. Just recently I’ve had several old trappers over to the house for a shot of white lightning and, you know, I’ve never caught them one time committing the transgression of Onan with ANY animal skins, nor have I ever subdued them as they attempted to mount my bear rug. Why, that’s the kind of behaviour one might expect in the bush. So-to-speak. I did once apprehend Old Zeke toying furtively with my vinyl tigerskin comforter, but that’s a story for another day.

Another misogynist speculation claimed that beaver = pussy as a reference to castoreum: the bitter, putrid smelling secretion produced by the male and female beaver. Castoreum is secreted near and adheres to the vaginal follicles of the female beaver.

Another woman-hater steps forth with this moist tidbit of odium: “It is a direct reference to the smell of unwashed muliebrity, that is, an unclean vagina, which after a certain passage of time, may imitate the reek of castoreum.” Well, douche me silly! Considering the fact that 99 percent of humanity has never smelled castoreum at any time throughout all of history, that is the most loathsome and uneducated guess of them all.

Other guesses arise in the guise of dirty jokes.

Question: What is a beaver?

Answer: A furry critter that sits on your face and tries to swallow your tongue.

 

The commonsense answer to why beaver= pussy is clear. It is a simple visual reference to female pubic hair.

Before the 1920s, when beaver meaning pussy began to appear in English print, there was a transferred usage of beaver wherein the word referred to a bearded man, transferred because beaver pelts were used as fur hats for men, therefore the word’s meaning transferred from the hat to the wearer (first mention in print approx. 1850 CE). So the evolution of usage might look like this: He’s wearing a beaver hat > He’s wearing a beaver > He’s got a beaver (a beard) > He’s a beaver.

The Lamentable Paucity of Divine Synonymy

Please also note that there are 4 or 5 common synonyms for God such as Almighty, Creator, Divine Being, Father, Holy Spirit, Infinite Spirit, Jehovah, Personal Friend of Rush Limbaugh and Pat Robertson, and King of Kings.

But there are 5,000 synonyms for beaver e.g. pussy, vagina, cunt, cooter, cooch, snatch, twat, muff, box, nookie, bearded clam, quim, gash, poontang, slit, hole, snapper, vertical smile, fish, honey pot, crack, peach, meat wallet, cockpit, bush, fanny, yoni, and gates of heaven. Now, why would there be such a synonymous plethora of vulval equivalents? Is pussy more important than God? You supply the answer.

Beaver as pussy shows up in phrasal extensions of the vulgarity too. A beaver cleaver is a penis. A beaver leaver is a gay male. But a beaver lever is also a phallic reference.

The Merkin Explanation

This origin is ingenious but is jinxed by the vast discrepancy in the dates of merkin and the earliest appearance in print of beaver = pussy.

Says one pussy scholar: “In the 17th - late 19th century, women were wont to depilate their vaginal regions for both fashionable and health reasons, however for comfort purposes (using the equipment of the day) it was found that some form of covering was required to avoid irritation. The remedial object was known as a merkin. You'll find this word in large dictionaries described as a female or pubic wig. Merkins were fashioned from fine beaver pelts, hence the modern idiom.” Doubting that last sentence, I sent Fellacity, my fact checker (yes, she changed her name from Felicity), to the basement library and she discovered that in fact merkins flourished chiefly in the 18th century and merkins were almost universally made of scaped, sterilized mouse skin.

The word scientist who evolved that theory does not explain how the slangy, vulgar beaver term arose two hundred years after anyone even saw a merkin. There is no record of beaver=pussy before the 1920s.

An anonymous feminist web writer states that the term offends because “beaver is one of those slang terms that dehumanizes and depersonalizes a women, and she becomes just that body part, so you can do to her what you wish.”

……….

If questing scholars would care to peruse my etymological probings into the origin of the animal word, beaver, please click here. If not, enjoy the play of words and don't get all split out of shape about it.

© 2010 William Gordon Casselman

Any comments, corrections, emendations, additional word lore, orders for my books? Please email me at canadiansayings@mountaincable.net

 

 

 

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