You people don’t know good erotica when you see it, obvs.

by greg—Feb 11, 04:17 PM

is that last word an anagram of boys?

by Balthasar Gracián—Feb 11, 06:35 PM

it would be if it had a y.

by greg—Feb 11, 07:09 PM

The original ancestor of Y was the Semitic letter Waw, which was also the ultimate origin of the modern letters F, U, V, and W. See F for details.

The letter Y was used in Old English, as in Latin, to represent /y/; however, some claim that this use was an independent invention in England created by stacking a V and an I, unrelated to the Latin use of the letter. Regardless, it is fairly likely that the letter, although technically named Y Græca (IPA [u gre:ka]) meaning ‘Greek u’ in contradistinction from native Latin /u/, came to be analyzed as the letter V (called /uː/) atop the letter I (called /iː/). The letter was thus referred to as [uː iː], which after /uː/ became the glide /w/ and after English’s Great Vowel Shift naturally became /waɪ/.

By Middle English, /y/ had lost its roundedness and merged with /i/, and Y came to be used with the same values as I, /iː/ and /ɪ/ as well as /j/. Those dialects that retained /y/ spelled it with U, under French influence.

by Balthasar Gracián—Feb 11, 07:22 PM

Mind your dipthongs!

Boy is spelled with Y regardless of the language you use.

by greg—Feb 11, 07:37 PM

Speaking of testicles…

by greg—Feb 11, 10:48 PM