You guys are making this way too complicated. The "-sy" or "-y" suffix in English has a diminutive function, as in "my little dolly" or "pussy cat" or "dandy." "My wittie bittie baby-waby." It's baby talk, which is reminescent of a certain kind of speech pattern commonly associated with male homosexuals. Thus, pansies are appropriate in a way that, say, dandelions or roses are not. "He's a real dandelion!" Nope, doesn't work.
There is no deep significance here. ;)
--- On Sun, 3/1/09, Philip Pilkington <pilkingtonphil at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> As for the thought/thinking aspect, I still think that the
> feminisation of
> the Latin term when imported in English (penser =>
> pensive) is rather
> interesting. I've always thought that the best way to
> think about etymology
> is through the Freudian notion of
> "overdetermination" (
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overdetermination). The best
> way to gain
> contemporary knowledge of the root of certain usages is by
> taking into
> account ALL the available data and trying to make
> connections - the same is
> true of cultural phenomena, as Foucault has clearly showed;
> a sort of pure
> empiricism.
>