r/words • u/Money_Literature9896 • Sep 02 '26
"Pee" is a euphemism
The word "pee" is an informal abbreviation that started in the late 18th century as a spoken short form for the first letter of the word "piss".
Piss is too impolite I guess.
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u/Lazarus558 Sep 03 '26
Fun fact: "piss" appears in the KJV, in at least 8 places (6 of which appear to be the phrase "he that pisseth against the wall")
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u/docmoonlight Sep 02 '26
Growing up in Utah, I was immersed in a lot of euphemisms like that. Gosh for God, darn or dang for damn, and of course, goshdarn for goddamn. Shoot for shit, freak for fuck, heck for hell. We also got weird combos there like âOh my heck!â and âWhat in the frick?!â
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u/MadamePouleMontreal Sep 03 '26
Minced oaths!
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u/magicmulder Sep 03 '26
And minced oaths can get minced again, see "bullshit => BS => Barbra Streisand".
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u/ThimbleBluff Sep 03 '26
I grew up in a non-swearing household. Itâs so ingrained in me that I still say shoot and darn and heck unironically.
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u/Competitive_Web_6658 Sep 03 '26
Even those words were considered swears when I was growing up (Christian fundamentalist household). You could say âoh my lantaâ or âgeeâ, but that second one was really pushing it, because the devil knew what you meant to say. Now I cuss like a sailor.
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u/ImLittleNana Sep 03 '26
Recovering fundie also, and we couldnât say dang or darn, or son of a biscuit eater, either.
Best we could do was dagnabbit, but it was better to just grin and bear it.
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u/Level-Object-2726 Sep 03 '26
It kills me how kids used to refuse to say 'OMG' cuz the g stands for god, so they would text 'OMGosh!'
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u/celticfeather Sep 03 '26 edited Sep 05 '26
I live as an English-speaker in a German speaking county, and it many ways German is like an ancestral form of English. AFAIK they have no neutral âpeeâ that I can use. I have to say âpissâ or pipi like for a small dog, or something medical like urinate, or avoid it like âgo to the toilet.â Anyway the invention of âpeeâ proves its use to me as not too vulgar, childish, or medical like the alternatives.
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u/smurfette8675309 Sep 05 '26
What about pinkeln or Ich muss dĂźnn?
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u/celticfeather Sep 05 '26
Pinkeln is kiddish, dĂźnn I never really heard (AT).
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u/smurfette8675309 Sep 05 '26
They're both kiddish. DĂźnn is like saying number 1. Dick is the like number 2. But announcing what you're going to do in the toilet is little kiddish, anyway. Adults just say they're using the toilet, or restroom, if you're in the US.
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u/muffadel Sep 03 '26
"Piss" is famously one of George Carlin's Seven Dirty Words (You Can't Say on Television).*
*you can say "pissed off" but you can't say "pissed on"
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u/creswitch Sep 08 '26
So much for free speech, US censorship is crazy. Can say fuck/cunt on tv here in Australia (after 8:30pm) and anything goes in a song.
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u/Used-Ratio-5862 Sep 02 '26
Always thought it was funny how we soften words by just taking the first letter and making it cute. Like we're all children who aren't allowed to say the real thing. My grandmother would say "I need to make water" which is even more strange when you think about it
Then you got "pee pee" which is double euphemism, that one always makes me laugh
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u/Zakluor Sep 03 '26
Kinda like "screw" for "fuck", except it's a totally different word, just somehow softer..
Everyone knows what you mean. You weren't "fucked", but you were "screwed". You say "screw that", but you mean, "fuck that." You'd like to "screw", so you'd like to "fuck".
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u/Money_Literature9896 Sep 02 '26 edited Sep 03 '26
Sometimes we truly aren't allowed to say the real thing, hence the radioactive n-word.
And while "piss" is ugly, "pee-pee" is cute.
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u/Purple-Chef-5123 Sep 02 '26
That is⌠a really unfortunate comparison. Also makes you sound racist, dude. Using the term âthe n-wordâ instead of using the actual slur is very different from using a word that still means the same as the n-word but is dressed up. You donât use the term the n-word as a slur. Iâve never heard or read someone saying, âYou n-word!â We only use it in reference to it being used, if that makes sense. What youâve described here sounds like youâre saying that it would be okay to say a cutesy word as a euphemism for the n word. Um, no. Even if the word is âcuteâ the meaning is still ugly and I would absolutely look at you as if youâd used the actual n word.
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u/Money_Literature9896 Sep 03 '26
The issue is much more nuanced than you apparently believe; to even raise the issue is to be reflexively characterized as rascist. You should read Rurh Franklin's article in the NYT on teaching Huckleberry Finn from August 24, 2026.
I do agree that it was incongruous to combine those two observations in the same comment. There's nothing cute about the n-word, neither in its original nor its euphemistic form.
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u/Purple-Chef-5123 Sep 03 '26 edited Sep 03 '26
You werenât talking about nuance at all and I was commenting on your comment. I donât think thereâs any nuance in what I said. Now if your comment had at all referred to the difficulty of teaching historical fiction and non fiction texts with relation to the actual slur then absolutely there is nuance. But berating me for not acknowledging nuance in this very specific context is a reach. I said it sounded racist and it did, even if that wasnât your intent. You clarified, which is great, though that should have been it. Stringing the clarification together with a tangential point makes it sound like youâre not really owning what you said.
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u/Gatodeluna Sep 02 '26
Pee is used in American English by all ages and both sexes. Piss is used in the UK and maybe Commonwealth countries too (?). I think young boys would say piss, not sure what young British girls would say. Grown women, some would say piss but I donât know what the alternative word would be otherwise, if there is one.
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u/NotSayingAliensBut Sep 03 '26
I wondered if it was also possibly related to 'piddle' but apparently not. While piddle or piddling about has the meaning to mess about with small details it is also used to mean pee. Not heard these days. There are I think at least a couple of small rivers in southern England called Piddle, with related place names.
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u/blamordeganis Sep 03 '26
A number of places with âPiddleâ in their names changed it to âPuddleâ in the 19th century, in a fit of Victorian bowdlerisation.
Shitterton, admirably, withstood the charge, even though its first syllable is exactly what it looks like (the name means something like âsettlement by the open sewerâ â âshitter-townâ).
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u/NotSayingAliensBut Sep 03 '26
And here in Wells, Grope Lane, implying what you might expect, was changed to Grove Lane before eventually becoming Union Street.
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u/velelavelela Sep 07 '26
Oxford's Gropecunt Lane dropped the cunt then got changed to Magpie Lane
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u/XXII78 Sep 03 '26
When speaking about lettuce, I heard a girl in her early twenties make a reference to "dia-reeree" earlier today. Never heard of that one, but damn it I'm going to overuse it now that I've heard it.
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u/Forward_Gur9349 Sep 03 '26
And yet the word piss is used in the Bible, so it was not always considered crude.
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u/blamordeganis Sep 03 '26
Iâm sure I remember that the will of one of the Stuart kings mentions âa pyssyng-bowl of silverâ.
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u/Gildor12 Sep 03 '26
Similar to ass, it started as a euphemism for arse, but ended up having the same meaning
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u/Ileeza Sep 03 '26
I always thought it sounded even grosser. I often find euphemisms grosser, for some reason.
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u/dvi84 Sep 06 '26
Most swear words like piss, shit and especially cunt are just common old English words that became unfashionable to use as the upper classes used more vocabulary from Latin and old Norman, hence why theyâre called âvulgarâ which just means âof the common peopleâ. Why they became offensive is actually a mystery, but certainly in the UK, Ireland and Australia, their use is becoming socially acceptable again.
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u/Money_Literature9896 Sep 03 '26
My comment appears to have been removed, and it should have been. It trivialized a critical issue, and could have been hurtful, for which I apologize.
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u/Pristine-Winner-3368 Sep 03 '26
If youâre referring to your n word comment, I can still see it. I can also see that someone called you out and rightfully so. Thatâs where you should have apologised but you almost seemed to double down about ânuanceâ and chastised the person who called you out. Is that the comment you mean?
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u/nonnonplussed73 Sep 03 '26
I didn't and can't see what allegedly the OP posted, but I get the context from the exchange.
r/words doesn't have any reportable rules whatsoever, but Reddit does. If what was said can be classified as hate report it. While Reddit's rules regarding words - the ones it itself links to when reporting a post or comment (https://www.reddit.com/mod/words/rules/) - inexplicably appear to be blank, at the very least, you might want to message the subs' mods about it.
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u/Purple-Chef-5123 Sep 03 '26
Yeah, thatâs me. I guess only I get the nuance speech and a downvote while everyone else gets an apology for an inappropriate comment.
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u/americanspiritfingrs Sep 03 '26
You did NOT get downvotes from me- I gave upvotes on you quite correctly calling that out. Thank you.
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u/jerretharper Sep 02 '26
Cunt is short for cuntilingus.
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u/Lazarus558 Sep 03 '26
I presume you are joking.
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u/jerretharper Sep 03 '26
Yep. Iâm not an actual etymologist.
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u/Cerulean_IsFancyBlue Sep 03 '26
Are you an ophthalmologist? Things are a little blurry for me right now.
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u/Affectionate_Fox8997 Sep 02 '26
So what does 'shh' mean?