Lean Left

Comments (6)

• #1 by Brian at October 13th, 2004

  

  From an original account of a 1818 expedition:

  “The most remarkable heights in any part of the great backbone of America are three elevated insular mountains, or peaks, which are seen at the distance of one hundred and fifty miles: the hunters very aptly designate them the Pilot Knobs they are now generally known as the Three Paps or ‘Tetons’”

  http://www.cr.nps.gov/history/online_books/grte1/chap5.htm

• #2 by Donny at October 13th, 2004

  

  Is this helpful?

  http://www.enormes-seins.biz/tetons.html

• #3 by kevin at October 13th, 2004

  

  Dude, you are so lazy ….

• #4 by tgirsch at October 13th, 2004

  

  Actually, my Google Skillz(tm) simply failed me. I attempted to Google it up and also searched the NPS web site, and couldn’t find anything credible. Thanks to Brian for finding the reference (although I must admit I still had to look up “paps”).

• #5 by Kevin T. Keith at October 13th, 2004

  

  Admittedly, I’m directing this at Kevin T. Keith

  . . . because global-wide public communications systems are the best choice for messages aimed at a single person.

  our resident purveyor of useless knowledge

  Thanks.

  Anyway . . . the answer appears to be “yes”, though the word is certainly a colloquialism and may be rare. The Collins-Robert French-English Dictionary gives it as an entryword, with the translation “breast, tit” and a notation indicating that it is informal and perhaps slightly vulgar (though not outrightly offensive).

  As for actual examples of use, they are hard to find. The “tits” etymology is certainly the standard folkloric explanation for the name of the “Grand Tetons” mountains - supposedly so-called by early French explorers because, to a bunch of lonely men far from home, they looked like “big tits”. (Actually, they were apparently first called “Les Trois Tetons” - “the three tits” - and later re-named “grand”. Since there are three mountains, I suppose this makes sense, but gives rise to disturbing imagery.) However, this seems to be the only such usage that is widely known. And there is never any explanation as to who gave them that name, other than “French trappers”.

  Note that “Teton” was also a Westernized version of the indigenous Sioux term for one of the major divisions of the Sioux nation (the Teton Indians were also known as the Lakota Sioux, and included a number of well-known tribes). The Teton Sioux lived across the midwest not far from the Grand Teton mountains. French names in the Teton region were certainly known: a local Indian tribe was - and still is - referred to as the “Gros Ventre” because their culture regarded a “big belly” as a social attribute (as it is in many subsistence-level economies). At the same time, many local names, including Cheyenne (capital of the state in which Grand Tetons Park is located), Dakota, Sioux City, and others come from (usually Westernized) indigenous tribal names. So whether the Teton mountains were named by humorous French trappers, or were named after a major local Indian group is hard to say - there are examples of both in the region.

  Babelfish refuses to recognize vulgarisms. It gives “large let us tetons” as the English translation of “grand tetons”. It has no English translation of “tetons” alone. And after exhaustive research, I have confirmed, however, that it also has no translation for “boobs”, “boobies”, “bazoombas”, “knockers”, or “hooters”. (Actually, it translates “hooters” as “sirens”, and “tits” as the equivalent of “titmouse”, which I find particularly lame. Bizarrely, it also translates “breasts” as “sein” - the preferred dictionary translation - but it translates “sein” back into English as “centre”.) So the lack of a translation for “tetons” in Babelfish indicates nothing.

  Alleen Pace Nilsen, in an essay on gendered language, supports the standard etymology and offers an entertaining list of place names, but gives no sources:

  As a volunteer for the University of Wisconsin’s Dictionary of American Regional English (DARE), I read a western trapper’s diary from the 1930s. I was to make notes of any unusual usages or language patterns. My most interesting finding was that the trapper referred to a range of mountains as The Teats, a metaphor based on the similarity between the shapes of the mountains and women’s breasts. Because today we use the French wording, The Grand Tetons, the metaphor isn’t as obvious, but I wrote to mapmakers and found the following listings: Nippletop and Little Nipple Top near Mount Marcy in the Adirondacks; Nipple Mountain in Archuleta County, Colorado; Nipple Peak in Coke County, Texas; Nipple Butte in Pennington, South Dakota; Squaw Peak in Placer County, California (and many other locations); Maiden’s Peak and Squaw Tit (they’re the same mountain) in the Cascade Range in Oregon; Mary’s Nipple near Salt Lake City, Utah; and Jane Russell Peaks near Stark, New Hampshire.

  (Babelfish gives “trayons” as the translation of “teats”. Note also that Nilsen’s history of the name ["the teats"] isn’t the canonical story.)

  Todd E. van Hoosear’s fascinating Web Site - “How to Swear in French” - includes “teton” as a translation for “tit”. However, I note he also includes “nenes” as another euphemism for tits, and “faux nenes” as the accepted translation for “falsies” - which to my ear sounds like a rather unlikely bit of slang - and translates “fuck off” as a noun phrase. I don’t think Mr. Van Hoosear wields much authority on this subject.

  Here we get our hands on the subject (so to speak). “Tetons Rouge” (”red tits” in our translation) is a stained-glass and metal sculpture of a female figure. Look closely. The artist’s name - Nicole Teuliere - seems French, which would give us our first documented use of “tetons” in the approved sense by an actual French-type-person, but she shows through a London gallery and I can’t confirm her origin.

  The National Park Service completely chickens out on the question. Their Grand Tetons Park Web site contains no mention of the origin of the name whatsoever - neither debunking the longstanding story nor endorsing it, but simply ignoring it entirely.

  So, in the end, a serious and quite hefty French-English dictionary does give “teton” as slang for “tit”, but there are almost no common uses of the term found in the wild other than in the name of the “Grand Tetons” mountains - which could equally plausibly have come from the name of a nearby Indian nation. I’ll be happy to look into the matter more closely if anyone wants to pony up for air fare to Paris.

• #6 by tgirsch at October 13th, 2004

  

  KTK:

  I knew I could count on you! Actually, I was primarily directing it at you, but making it an open question in case someone else happened to know the answer. Which, apparently, a couple of people did. I’ve got a morbid curiosity about Donny’s link, but I’m reasonably certain that websense will have none of it.

  It should also be noted that Cheyenne is nowhere near the Grand Tetons National Park — it’s over 400 miles away.

  (To convert that into New York City distances, it would be like traveling from Battery Park to Central Park and back thirty-one times. New York State equivalent? NYC to Niagra Falls is about 25 miles less than Cheyenne to Grand Teton.)

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