A review by spacestationtrustfund
A Natural History of the Senses by Diane Ackerman

1.0

Reading this book felt like sticking my entire face into an enormous bouquet of flowers and inhaling a lungful of pollen. Too much of a mildly interesting thing, is what I'm saying. This is some of the most florid prose I've read in a long time.

The etymological aspects were almost universally incorrect, repeating long-since-debunked conspiracy-level nonsense. For example:

...in many European languages the slang names for prostitutes are variations on the Indo-European root pu, to decay or rot. In French, putain; to the Irish, old put; in Italian putta; puta in both Spanish and Portuguese.

Yeah so this is just straight-up incorrect. The exact etymology of these words is unknown, but the most likely origin in every case is from the Latin puta (girl). "Putain" is from Old French, originally the oblique case of "pute" (same meaning), from Vulgar Latin putta, from Latin puta, the feminine form of putus (boy). The Italian is derived from the French, and the Spanish is thought to be connected to the Italian. Joan Corominas's Diccionario crítico etimológico de la lengua castellana (1954) and Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana (1961), widely considered some of the most accurate philological and etymological sources on the Spanish language, both corroborate this. The idea that "pute," "putain," and "puta" are from putida, putidus is incredibly unlikely.

Also, this is pedantic, but: it's PIE *puH-, not "pu."