• Im_old@lemmy.world
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    4 days ago

    I had to scroll back in my saved posts to a million years ago to resurrect this.

    • ✺roguetrick✺@lemmy.world
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      3 days ago

      That metaphor (breasts as fruit) transcends language though. Whatever you call fruits you’ll end up calling breasts. Here’s the song of Solomon which was semetic.

      I said, ‘I will go up to the palm tree; I will take hold of the boughs thereof.’ Now also thy breasts shall be as clusters of the vine, and the smell of thy nose like apples.

      Instead of viewing things like this etymologically, it’s better to see them as universal metaphors that transcend language and culture. Similar to light and darkness.

  • Kitathalla@lemy.lol
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    3 days ago

    In the defense of the ancients who were naming things like other things they sort of looked like… what OTHER substance was around at that time that was both white and liquid?

    Because maybe we should be grateful for the milk metaphor instead of the option that only nuts would choose…

    \ >.> Would you rather it be called after dough?

  • stebo@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    4 days ago

    In German and Dutch it’s way worse: “Säugetier” and “zoogdier”. Both can roughly be translated to “sucking animals”. I was taught in school that it’s called that because babies suck on the mother’s breasts to be fed and this is a unique trait to mammals. So in conclusion, we all suck.

  • pocopene@lemmy.world
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    4 days ago

    Just wait till you know the etymology of mastodon: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mastodon

    Edit to save a click: "A mastodon, (from Ancient Greek μαστός (mastós), meaning “breast, and ὀδούς (odoús) “tooth”)”

    Edit 2: the “mast” in “mastodon” is the same one as in “mastectomy”

  • sik0fewl@lemmy.ca
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    4 days ago

    Ackshully, “galaxy” (or rather, “galaxias”) means “Milky Way” already, it’s just a translation. It was less ambiguous when the only galaxy we could see was the Milky lights that covered a lot of our sky.

    Of course, we realize there’s more than one galaxy now, so the meanings have diverged.

          • shalafi@lemmy.world
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            3 days ago

            My great aunt explained to me as a child in the 70s that the moon was round because gravity pulled it into a sphere. This woman was born around 1890, educated in a one-room schoolhouse and lived on a Civil War-era farm in bumfuck West Virginia.

            And then ya got what we have here today.

  • Rhaedas@fedia.io
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    4 days ago

    We’re the only(?) species that have evolved them to become more than their basic function. Other species use colors and other features for mating signals, humans use shapes. Definitely wired to be interested in them.

    • the_weez@midwest.social
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      4 days ago

      Hold up, are other hominids interested in boobs? Any other mammal? Any non mammals into boobs? How much tiddy science have we really done here? I need tiddy facts.

      • Uli@sopuli.xyz
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        4 days ago

        This might be pseudoscience I got taught 20 years ago, but I have been under the impression that human evolution of breasts as a secondary sexual characteristic has to do with the shift to becoming bipedal. Like a lot of animals, early hominids would see the rear end of a fellow hominid and know this as a trigger for copulation. But when homo erectus started standing upright, butts weren’t so universally erotic anymore. They had a whole back and head above them now. Breasts didn’t need to be very large to fill their function, but an increase in size gave them a curvy appearance similar to a set of butt cheeks. And early humans were like, yeah, I think that’s right, and selected for increased (or at least variable) breast size.

        • Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de
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          3 days ago

          It’s probably part of it, but there’s definitely also other stuff like the fact that human breasts are always prominent, unlike most other animals where the sexual display stuff waxes and wanes with them being fertile.

          The best hypothesis i’m aware of is that human sexuality is just really strange and kinda… slutty… (this applies to everyone). Like it seems that our default way of going about things before civilization fucked it up was to just kinda have fun with anyone who caught our fancy and reciprocated the feelings, so our dicks evolved to scoop out sperm and tits evolved to always be on display so no one can tell if you’re fertile or not, and presumably same thing with us having no mating season to speak of.

          Just try to be attractive so as many people as possible will want to bang you, and maybe if you’re lucky you can even find someone who likes you enough that they actively avoid banging others, which is pretty damn sweet because you know that kid will be yours. But in the end it doesn’t really matter whose kid is whose, because everyone will help raise them.

        • the_weez@midwest.social
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          4 days ago

          Listen, I’m not trying to refute anything here. I’m just saying that some extra tiddy experiments are probably required in order to fully understand this phenomena. I know that not everyone is cut out for this kind of thing, so I’m willing to take one for the team here. I just need a little funding and a steady supply of consenting tiddy owners.

    • queermunist she/her@lemmy.ml
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      4 days ago

      Yeah this isn’t a universal human thing like the post suggests, it’s just that terms like “mammal” and “galaxy” are rooted in Europe.

      Folks? There are people outside of Europe, and they have different opinions on stuff!

  • Majorllama@lemmy.world
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    4 days ago

    If y’all could please direct me to the thighs and calves galaxies I’ll be on my way. I enjoy boobs as do most humans, but I am a legs man.