{"id":38896,"date":"2015-02-03T00:10:05","date_gmt":"2015-02-03T08:10:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/?p=38896"},"modified":"2015-02-02T22:17:29","modified_gmt":"2015-02-03T06:17:29","slug":"p-u-means-stink-origins-smelly-words","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/index.php\/2015\/02\/p-u-means-stink-origins-smelly-words\/","title":{"rendered":"What Does “P.U.” (As in Something Smelly) Stand For?"},"content":{"rendered":"
Mark C. asks: What does the letters in the stinky term P.U. stand for?<\/div>\n

\"smell\"<\/a>Often used to accuse someone of exceeding his allotted level of funk, P.U.<\/em> is, surprisingly, not an acronym, but, rather, likely was derived simply from the pronunciation of its parent word.<\/p>\n

Dating back to the early 17th century, a common exclamation of contempt for a foul odor was pyoo<\/em>. As English spelling had yet to become standardized, this word was also written as pue, peugh, pew <\/em>and pue<\/em>. Although each variant was correctly pronounced py\u00fc<\/em>, often in practice, and particularly to express outrage, both syllables were stretched out with the pronunciation: p\u0113-‘\u016b <\/em>(pee-YOU), which, over the years, has been changed into P.U.
\n<\/em><\/p>\n

As for where the 17th century versions came from, this is anybody’s guess, with some linguists postulating that perhaps it came from the Latin “puteo,” meaning “stink, rotten, putrid.”<\/p>\n

If you’re wondering about the origins of some of the other of the many words we have to describe things that smell bad, stink <\/em>dates back to the mid-13th century, as does smell<\/em> (although smelly<\/em> is a relatively recent invention, first being seen in the mid-19th century).<\/p>\n

Stench<\/em> dates to the dawn of the 13th century and derives from Proto-Germanic, *stankwiz<\/em>, and is related to the Old High German stanch<\/em>, as well as the Old Saxon, stanc.<\/em><\/p>\n

Fetid<\/em> was a child of the Latin word fetidus<\/em>, and dates back to the early 15th century, as does its cousin (now in disuse), fetor<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Reek, <\/em>which originally was a verb meaning “to smoke,” took on the connotation of “to smell bad” in the 17th century.<\/p>\n

Meaning just “a smell or scent,” odor <\/em>entered the English language about 1300 and came from the Old French odor <\/em>and the Anglo-French, odour<\/em>, themselves children of the Latin word, odor<\/em>, of the same meaning.<\/p>\n

Redolent<\/em>, also doesn’t necessarily mean a bad odor, and it dates back to the early 15th century and Old French, as well as the Latin word, redolentem<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Malodorous<\/em>, was created in the 19th century by simply combining the common prefix, mal-<\/em>, with odorous<\/em>.<\/p>\n

A word that is far older than I would’ve expected, funk<\/em>, meaning “bad smell,” has been around since the early 17th century and is related to a French word, funki\u00e8re<\/em>, which means “to smoke.” It has been used to describe a particular style of music<\/a> since 1959.<\/p>\n

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