vagina dentata

English

Etymology

First attested 1908, from Latin vagina + dentata (“toothed”); popularized chiefly by Sigmund Freud.

Noun

vagina dentata (plural vaginae dentatae or vagina dentatas or vagina dentata)

1. The mythical toothed vagina; often related to castration anxiety.
   • 2005, Barbara Creed, Phallic Panic: Film, Horror and the Primal Uncanny, Melbourne Univ. Publishing, →ISBN, page 86:

     This notion also associates the vampire more directly with the primal uncanny. The long quotation that Moretti uses from Marie Bonaparte's writings on Edgar Allen^[sic] Poe includes reference to the mythical vagina dentata, the ‘strange’ notion that the vagina ‘is furnished with teeth, and thus a source of danger in being able to bite and castrate’.

   • 2006, The Pervert's Guide to Cinema, Slavoj Žižek (actor):

     My relationship towards tulips is inherently Lynchian. I think they are disgusting. Just imagine. Aren't these some kind of, how do you call it, vagina dentata, dental vaginas threatening to swallow you?

   • 2013, B. Fahs, M. Dudy, S. Stage, The Moral Panics of Sexuality, Springer, →ISBN:

     Perhaps one of the most recognizable and acknowledged contemporary images of vagina dentata appears in Ridley Scott's Alien (1979). […] Indeed, Gieger^[sic] himself wanted the creature to be an embodiment of the fear of rape, making it a perfect match for the film.

Further reading

• vagina dentata on Wikipedia.Wikipedia