Píča (Czech pronunciation: [piːt͡ʃa]), sometimes short piča or pyča [pit͡ʃa]/[pɪt͡ʃa], is a Czech and Slovak profanity that refers to the vagina similar to the English word cunt. It is often represented as a symbol of a spearhead, a rhombus standing on one of its sharper points with a vertical line in the middle, representing a vulva.
The meaning is clear for Czechs, Slovaks and Hungarians. In some other languages it has other spellings (e.g. in the non-Slavic Hungarian language it is written as "picsa"), but has similar pronunciation and carries the same meaning and profanity. Drawing this symbol is considered a taboo, or at least unaccepted by mainstream society.
The word píča is of a feminine gender, in order to insult also men Czechs derived its masculine form píčus.
Symbol in culture
This symbol has occurred in a few Czech movies, including Bylo nás pět. In the 1969 drama The Blunder (Ptákovina), Milan Kundera describes the havoc, both public and private, that ensues after the headmaster of a school draws the symbol on a blackboard.[1] In Jára Cimrman's play Akt ("The Nude") one of the characters, sexologist Jan Turnovský, is caught drawing rhombi in his notepad.[2]
Jaromír Nohavica confessed, in the 1983-song Halelujá, to "drawing short lines and rhombi on a plaster" (in Czech: tužkou kreslil na omítku čárečky a kosočtverce).[3] František Ringo Čech named one of his provoking pictures The animals are admiring píča (in Czech: Zvířátka obdivují píču).[4] Czech punk band Tři sestry (Three sisters) uses modified symbol with three lines as its logo.
Píča in Ostrava region
In Moravian-Silesian Region, especially in Ostrava, the word is used strictly in its short form pyča, mostly as a filler. The fans of football club FC Baník Ostrava very often chant "Banik pyčo, Banik pyčo, FCB!".[5] Pyča is used in plenty of meanings, there is even a joke ridiculing Ostrava inhabitants; according to this joke the people there have a lack of vocabulary so if a man say "Pyča v pyči, pyčo!", he means "I broke up with my wife, my friend!".[6]
See also
- Lozenge, a similar symbol
Notes
- ↑ Jan Čulík, Milan Kundera, 2000, electronic version Archived 2009-07-23 at the Wayback Machine on University of Glasgow website
- ↑ Smoljak, Ladislav (2009). Divadlo Járy Cimrmana : hry a seminǎře : úplné vydání. Zdeněk. Svěrák (Vyd. 1 ed.). Praha: Paseka. ISBN 978-80-7185-973-4. OCLC 428457738.
- ↑ Jaromír Nohavica - oficiální web - Tvorba - Texty
- ↑ "White Dog". 2008-01-24. Archived from the original on 2008-01-24. Retrieved 2021-08-24.
- ↑ Baník pyčo !, archived from the original on 2021-12-19, retrieved 2021-08-24
- ↑ "Hádanky". lubosovy-vtipy.net. Retrieved 2021-08-24. To clarify, in the Ostrava region, the word "píča" is not commonly used with the letter "y." Instead, the pronunciation typically replaces the accented "í" with a regular "i." This local variation in pronunciation is specific to Ostrava and differs from the standard pronunciation found in other regions.
External links
- The dictionary definition of píča at Wiktionary
- Media related to Czech vulva symbols at Wikimedia Commons