Hello, my friends and the occasional relative!

Pusillanimous.

A long time ago a girl asked me what word she was thinking. I said pusillanimous, thinking it a fancy word she’d be deeply unlikely to be thinking (and which I didn’t understand the meaning of, I just liked the way it sounded, an upmarket purple of a word). She acted shocked and said that was it! How could I have known?? Thirty years later it occurred to me that maybe she hadn’t been being truthful. Sometimes it takes a really long time for the penny to drop, and that was about something trivial in my life.

On a completely different tangent, I have decided, on the basis of no research because why would I trust anything on the internet, and I’ve packed away my volumes of Britannica, that pusillanimous is the progenitor of the phrase, “Don’t be a pussy.”

That’s right. It has nothing to do with lady parts, you heard it here first.

Why? Well, because pusillanimous means “lacking courage, timid” per my 1990 Oxford concise dictionary that I could not bear to put into storage.

So I have decided that back in the Regency/early US historical period gentlemen would indulge in light ribbing of one another and accuse each other of being pusillanimous: not up for that duel, that commission, that dubious drink. Of course, a contraction of the word would occur – based around the initial letters p-u-s-i. Of course, back then they would have pronounced it “pew-zi”.

Initially it would have been used without the article: “Don’t be pew-zi, Bartholomew!”

Now this habit caught on and travelled across classes and continents, and the original pronunciation was lost and replaced by the more familiar one we know today, (and knew then). This enabled the article ‘a’ to be handily inserted, adding to the confusion. Thus “Don’t be a pussy,” was born, and the idea’s meaning misattributed. Now it is thought to refer to lady parts. But are they, in fact, afraid, timid, lacking in courage? I would contend not. It makes far more sense to realize that the period that worried about emoluments also cared about pusillanimity, and would call out those who did not display enough courage in a meaningful, yet stylish fashion. This was the era of Beau Brummell after all.

Therefore, my friends, I exhort you to remember, should you stoop to the use of this phrase, to say it like you mean it, and say it properly.

“Don’t be (a) pew-zi.”

Call out that pusillanimous asshat for exactly what they are, in a way that comports with my favourite dictionary.

You know this makes sense. Hyperfactual transmission ends.