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CALLIPYGIAN/kælɪˈpɪdʒɪən/ Having well-shaped buttocks. This is a word about which it would be possible to generate many bad puns, thereby making an ass of oneself and becoming the butt of jokes. The subject matter — and the rather beautiful form of the word itself — has lent itself to adoption by word-hungry authors, even though the first recorded use was only in 1880. Thomas Pynchon wrote in Gravity’s Rainbow: “Those dusky Afro-Scandinavian buttocks, which combine the callipygian rondure observed among the races of the Dark Continent with the taut and noble musculature of sturdy Olaf, our blond Northern cousin”. Its origin is in Greek kallipugos, used to describe a famous statue of Aphrodite; that comes from kallos, beauty (as in calligraphy, or callisthenics, or the lily called hemerocallis) plus puge, buttocks. |
Page created 28 Jun. 2001
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