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Wuss
Professor David Crystal
‘He’s a wuss.’ ‘She’s a wuss.’ It means ineffectual person,
indecisive, weak. It’s from the United States; it came in in
the 1980s. To be honest, I didn’t think it would last, but
it’s still here.
It has a very unclear etymology. It may be from ‘wussy’ –
that is from pussy wussy, you know, the pussy cat. It’s a
kind of talking down about a cat. Or it might be a blend of
‘wimp’ – that is an ineffectual person – plus ‘pussy’:
wimp/pussy, wussy, wuss.
‘Stop being a wuss!’ that’s the usage you hear a lot these
days. Anyway, whatever the etymology, a politician was
said to be ‘a liberal wuss’ – that is a coward. And there are
even Wuss Awards now. I saw on the web the other day,
‘Who was the biggest Wuss of 2005?’ - with a capital W –
this is obviously something very attractive to be.
The word seems to be developing. It’s become a verb –
‘Stop wussing!’ ‘Ah! He’s wussing around!’ And I’ve even seen a new
noun, wusser, wussers – ‘We’re all wussers now!’ ‘We’ve all become a
complete pack of complete wussers,’ says somebody on a website.
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