Loose Lips	Loose Lips Archive

Miss Poubelle's dear friend Catherine was recently in a conversation with a young Italian man who was learning English. He was anxious to test his understanding of various kinds of colloquial English, but found himself bewildered by the word poontang. Catherine and the other English speakers patiently explained its meaning, and finally felt that he got it. "Let me see if I understand," he said, "so if I have a girlfriend, I would say to her, 'My darling, I love you so much. I want to have your poontang.'"

View our poll archive

To understand why this is a funny way to use the word requires a short digression into a grammar lesson, and Miss Poubelle begs the indulgence of her readers for a second. Let her remind you that English nouns fall into two groups generally called "count" nouns and "mass" nouns. Count nouns refer to ordinary countable things, while mass nouns refer to substances, abstractions, and things without clear boundaries, Count nouns (like egg or pickle) have plurals (eggs, pickles). They are used with adjectives of quantity like many or few, but not with adjectives like some or a little. Mass nouns (like milk or butter) don't have any plurals, so it is odd to say I bought some butters. Mass nouns are used with adjectives like some or a little, but not with adjectives like many or few. So one says I want some milk, but not I want many milks). It is also possible for speakers to switch nouns from one group to the other. So normally we say John put a few eggs on the table, but it is also possible to say John put some egg on the table, and the implication is that egg now refers to the (non-countable) substance inside the eggshell.

What is interesting about the word poontang is that it is a mass noun referring to sex in general or (as the Oxford English Dictionary rather nicely puts it), to "women, regarded as a means of sexual gratification." Probably it is only used for sex with women. It sounds a trifle odd to say Mary needs some poontang. We can tell that it is a mass noun because it is most commonly used in phrases like get some/a little poontang and because there is no plural. (At least, Miss Poubelle has never heard anyone say poontangs!). Poontang is like the words pussy or ass when they appear in phrases like Did you get any ass/pussy? However, these words can all be used as count nouns as well (since we can say pussies/asses). What is funny about poontang is that it is only a mass noun, and is not generally used to refer to a specific body part.

Various slang dictionaries agree that poontang is a North American word, and that it probably comes from the French putain (prostitute). Poontang first appears in the late 1920s, and the first recorded use seems to be in Thomas Wolfe's Look Homeward, Angel, when one character says "A fellow's got to have a little Poon Tang." But there are curious discrepancies about which part of the continent wherein the term first arose. One dictionary claims that it was originally Black English and is a borrowing from Louisiana French. Another says that poontang is originally a Canadian word (and thus presumably comes from Canadian French).

French putain is an ordinary count noun: just as there are whores in Toronto, there are putains in Montreal. How it got transformed into a mass noun in English is anyone's guess. But the fact that poontang is a mass noun goes a long way toward explaining its somewhat hostile overtones. We want lovers to be attracted to us because we are smart or sexy or funny; not because they are looking for a piece of ass and we happen to be there. Poontang very much presents the world of sex as one composed of indistinguishable pieces of meat. But it is precisely the differences between all the dicks and balls and cunts and asses of the world that makes sex such an eternally fascinating subject. If we believe that the endless variety of our bodies is an entry to the endless variety of our souls, then we want to feast at a banquet of diversity; not resign our selves to an undifferentiated mass of poontang.