Talk:puss-gentleman

What does this mean, really?

this dictionary suggests that it originally means a type of cat, which leaves me a bit puzzled, as the Cowper quote

I cannot talk with civet in the room,

A fine puss gentleman who's all perfume.

which I found was explained somewhere as referring to civet as a color. Who would have an exotic pet sitting around in the room, anyway, and why would it make someone too shy to speak? I don't pretend to understand what's going on here. But it might be that nobody really knows what Cowper meant, and any use of the term outside the poem is based on the speaker's own interpretation of the etymology. And like pussyfoot I suspect the listener's interpretation will be colored by association with the modern meanings of pussy. —Soap— 13:56, 6 September 2023 (UTC)

Its worth noting perhaps that in the original poem, it's not hyphenated. One use even gets it the wrong way around ... fine-puss gentleman. So this might not have been intended as a single word, but only came to be so when later writers imitated it. —Soap— 14:12, 7 October 2023 (UTC)

This would probably pass RFV based on derivative use, but just barely ... there are far more dictionary hits than actual uses, and some of the uses are in quotes. At least one mis-attributes it to Shakespeare, as well. I might go for RFV, not so much that I expect it to get deleted, but because Im still not sure we can actually attribute the original sense we have to it (even if all the dictionaries agree that's what it means, we've rejected words like that before). —Soap— 14:25, 7 October 2023 (UTC)