hus (onomastics)

After trying for the past four years to figure out the etymology of hus, but failing, I decided to go to the man himself for help, and here is what he told me: "Hus is a little embarrassing. It's an old word for house. (A hussy was a kept woman: a house woman, like a house dog, rather than a housewife--a woman who was shacking up.) When I started the book, I wanted to combine the house-pet idea with the wild-boar idea, and called Babbi a hushhog. I hadn't gotten very far before I realized that most readers would see the word as hush.og and my characters began referring to him as "hus." So I left it at that." Robert Borski (who still doesn't understand how a "a half-grown hus" can look like "a cluster of boys, or two men upon their hands and knees," but I guess that's me.) *This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun.

"hush.og"? Looks like a website for librarians. I suppose that's supposed to say "hush og"? And I guess you mean that the orignial word was 'hushog' (one 'h' in the middle) pronounced "hus hog"? Took me a minute to figure that out - more confusing than the Matera Mint typo in Exodus.

I think it's just trying to capture the oddity of eight legs. Maybe our perceptions are so used to two/four legs that seeing eight legs would initially register as more than one critter. -Rostrum *This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun.