Etymology of Dupa

Reading some Robert Burns today and I came across a Scots word "doup" for the buttocks.

Does anyone know the etymology of the word "dupa"?

Apparently, dupło is Old Slavonic for a hollowed-out space, hence e.g. the modern Polish dziupla and dziura (hollow and hole). Later evolved along a side-track into dupa. Courtesy of Wikisłownik :-)

The sound is different too. The Scots word is more like dowp whereas dupa is more like duped.

Nevertheless, they might both be of Indo-European origin. What's the Sanskrit for hole?

I think you may well be right, Magda. Sanskrit for hole? Hmm...kha? How does that help?

I was just wondering whether it would have a du- or dou- in it somewhere, proving my theory of Indo-Eur ancestry of dupa. ;-) Amateur etymology at its best ;-)

Ta, dupa ;)

Is dupa an offshoot of pupa or quite separate?

According to the Scots dictionary I was browsing, it's also possible to say "doop". Probably a regional variation.

Although, funnily, as a verb, doup can also mean to bend or to stab. So he douped and his friend douped his doup.

I was wondering if it had come from the latin/french for "dup" referring to "two" (or something like that).

However, the above post has answered that one.

Thanks everyone.

I think it's rather the other way round 'pupa' being an euphemism

anyway 'dupa' might have just meant a hole - there is Czech word 'doupie' that means something like animal's den - there is also Polish 'dziupla' which in my view is just 'dupa' with a suffix

in Russian 'dupa' is 'żopa' (not far away phonetically if you look at Slavic languages) - interestingly Polish word for mine was 'żupa' ('żupa solna' was salt mine)

I have no idea about 'dupa' connections with other Indo-European languages

A Proto-Indoeuropean word for 'dupa' (backside) must have been along the lines of Greek 'pyge' - you might be surprised that the Polish vulgar word for female private parts is most propably directly connected to that Greek word - there is also Polish (also Czech) word for 'musk' - which is a secretion of the glands of a certain deer and the glands are well para-urinary - the word is 'piżmo' - the old German word for 'musk' is Bisam and it is said it is a borrowing from Turkish - it is quite probable the the source of Polish 'piżmo' is German Bisam - but for me this can be a coincidence and 'piżmo' can be of native origin from the root that was still productive back than (-mo suffix was productive in early Polish - it can be the same thing as the Greek suffix -ma found in words like 'magma', 'stigma', 'schisma', 'chasma', 'phlegma', 'phragma')

if you doubt certain words in Old Greek have direct counterparts (not being borrowings) in Polish (or Slavic in general) see the case of 'aulos' - 'ul' ('aulos' is a pipe in Greek - Polish 'ul' means a beehive (first beehives were simply hollowed out thick tree branches or trunks) - aha - the word reflects ProtoSlavic regular sound changes - all ProtoIndoeuropean -au- diphtongs word monophtongised into -u-

Possibly dupa is a variant from of żopa???

yeah, I thought it has something to do with German - 'Popo' is more or less German equivalent of Polish 'pupa' and if there was some borrowing involved I would bet it was rather German to Polish than the other way round (I pretty much believe 'pupa' to come from 'Popo'_

oh well - it goes further than that - en.wiktionary.org/wiki/puppis


you can still read the posts - they are not deep in the random thread yet (just been there to check if they're there)

there was not much interesting there to be honest - I'm just an amateur linguist with no real knowledge of languages like Lithuanian, a couple of words or roots of Latin origin and that's mostly it - the only original thing I came up with was the "'pyge' connection'" ;) - you just won't learn that Greek word unless you study a certain field and surprisingly it's not medicine too :)

the *dup- Slavic root is thought to be connected with Lithuanina *dub- root (meaning deep like in river or lake names (Dubissa) or a sink in the ground, a ditch), these are probably cognates with Germanic *diup root word which also meant deep, maybe the Slavic word is a direct borrowing from Gothic diups (deep) as there are plenty of direct Gothic loanwords in Slavic (including for example modry, modrzew*, chlew, chleb, druh, drużyna (perhaps also drugi) and perhaps even mleko)

*modry is a name of a blue colour now - but originally it was a name for red or blueish red colour - Gothic 'madr' - enraged, mad (so also red in face) - the old sense of modry is retained in Silesian 'modra kapusta' which is 'czerwona kapusta' in general Polish but also in 'modrzew' (larch) - it is most probably things like 'czerwona kapusta' (red cabbage) that actually caused the 'modry' to change it's meaning - modrzew was simply a modrodrzew - but it hardly makes sense if you think of modry as blue - but makes a lot of sense when 'modry' is red as larch wood is distincly red hue - btw larch wood was the most prized by old Poles - most of the wooden houses were built of it - in contrast to other conifer tree's wood it is very durable and ages very well in the air (know if first hand -not that I built anything from it) - I also guess that it does not change shape when drying out as our pine wood often does

and finally - read the this:

etymonline.com/index.php?term=deep&allowed_in_frame=0 (etymology of the 'deep' word)

oh there is another thing I would like to add - when talking about Gothic-Slavic language contact (which as we can see was quite alive) it pretty much defines the area ProtoSlavs lived in the time of contact as we can quite readily reconstruct the migration of the Goths (and the Gepids) from written records and archeology