Fubsy
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The Oxford English Dictionary defines fubsy as meaning "fat and squat, from late 18th century: from dialect fubs 'small fat person', perhaps a blend of fat and chub," but Eney implies a more attractive fannish meaning: "plump, pleasant and slightly pedomorphic."
In I Will Fear No Evil, Heinlein refers to "a round, fubsy box." This perhaps means only that both of them had a taste for obscure vocabulary and the word was never fanspeak at all, but we thought you'd like to know what it means, anyway.
From Fancyclopedia 2, ca. 1959 |
And looking at the result a generation later makes me uncomfortably aware of the changes that took place since 1959. I can laugh at my comment to our remote posterity, "For our readers in the year 2000..." But who'd have thought that describing Kabu's females as "fubsy" [plump, pleasant and slightly pedomorphic] would have become offensive for people who saw the word as related to "fubba-wubba" [fat, sloppy and cranky]? |