In glad you mentioned pupik, because that's a term not mentioned in the Yiddish thesaurus cited in the Tablet article. Since my mother died when I was young, my father (born in 1920 to Austrian immigrants) did most of my raising. He only ever used pupik, (context: him helping me bathe as a girl, or ensuring proper toilet hygiene,) and he never used it to refer to the navel, only genitals. Until recently, I assumed that pupik WAS the common slang for a girl's genitals, and didn't know it actually meant something else! #LostInTranslarion
In reply to <p>For decades I searched by thelivesofthed…
In glad you mentioned pupik, because that's a term not mentioned in the Yiddish thesaurus cited in the Tablet article. Since my mother died when I was young, my father (born in 1920 to Austrian immigrants) did most of my raising. He only ever used pupik, (context: him helping me bathe as a girl, or ensuring proper toilet hygiene,) and he never used it to refer to the navel, only genitals. Until recently, I assumed that pupik WAS the common slang for a girl's genitals, and didn't know it actually meant something else! #LostInTranslarion