I made the association to the French some years back, when I first heard the au pair exclaim, "ça pu!" when changing my kid's diaper for the first time. I agreed with a genuininely American "P. U.!" I find the Old French Norman influence plausible.
I was thinking about the French take on puer. Reputation is something that clings to one like a bad odor. Someone of ill repute has the odor of their ill-viewed practices upon them. The crude, abbreviated word for sex-worker in French is pute. The women who practiced the oldest profession were considered unclean. When the French want to use the "f-word" they say "putain", a longer form of the word for a prostitute, interestingly.
Pepé Le Pew!
I made the association to the French some years back, when I first heard the au pair exclaim, "ça pu!" when changing my kid's diaper for the first time. I agreed with a genuininely American "P. U.!" I find the Old French Norman influence plausible.
I suspect that like "cooties" and "plonk," it came from British troops in World War I. They just were a great lot for inventing slang, I guess.
I was thinking about the French take on puer. Reputation is something that clings to one like a bad odor. Someone of ill repute has the odor of their ill-viewed practices upon them. The crude, abbreviated word for sex-worker in French is pute. The women who practiced the oldest profession were considered unclean. When the French want to use the "f-word" they say "putain", a longer form of the word for a prostitute, interestingly.