> At 09:54 PM 2/27/2009, Philip Pilkington wrote:
>
> Well. according to highly entrusted online sources (heh) "pansy" dates
>> back
>> to Elizabethan times...
>>
>
> dunno. this is where i read it:
>
> "<http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=pansy>pansy<
> http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=pansy>
> c.1450, from M.Fr. pensée "a pansy," lit. "thought, remembrance," from fem.
> pp. of penser "to think," from L. pensare "consider," freq. of pendere "to
> weigh" (see <http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=pensive>pensive). So
> called because it was regarded as a symbol of thought or remembrance.
> Meaning "effeminate homosexual man" is first recorded 1929.
> http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=pansy
>
> Also, don't let the pansy fool ya:
> http://thegspot.typepad.com/blog/2008/04/dont-let-the-pa.html
>
> Personally? I was walking by a mound (heh) of pansies last night on my way
> home and thought that they looked like a bunch of blooming, bursting
> assholes ready and waiting! I guess Michael's Voyager Cam was on my mind.
> http://www.gardenerspath.com/plantguide/images/pansies.JPG
>
>
> shag
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>
Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pansy
"The word "pansy" has indicated an effeminate male since Elizabethan times and its usage as a disparaging term for a man or boy who is effeminate (as well as for an avowedly homosexual man) is still used."
There's some more interesting things in the Wiki article. For example the portrayal of the pansy as seductive and deceitful in Shakespeare's "A Midsummer's Nights Dream":
"the juice of it, on sleeping eyelids laid, will make a man or woman madly dote (fall in love) upon the next live creature that it sees."
The article also points out that these Shakespearean pansy associations were reflections not on the pansy as we know it, but on the heartsease. Apparently:
"Long before cultivated pansies were released into the trade in 1839, Heartsease was associated with thought in the "language of flowers", often by its alternative name of pansy (from the French "pensée" - thought): hence Ophelia's often quoted line in Shakespeare's *Hamlet*, "There's pansies, that's for thoughts"."
This would seem to confirm the idea I put forward above - rejected by some - that the "word precedes the thing". Coincidentally enough, in this particular case the word literally came into usage before the actual existence of the thing - and by some 300 years!!!
