Foovay's Floozies

Posted By Summer Foovay on January 19, 2010

I was doing a bit of research today on Valentines Day to get some ideas for Valentine’s Day coloring pages for my coloring pages website and I followed a thread from Valentines to the language of flowers to – tussie mussies.

NOW, apparently, tussie mussies are just a fussy word for a small bouquet of flowers, or perhaps the little cone shaped vase you’d get them in. But the term comes from the Victorian ages, when the language of flowers was in common use as a way for secret lovers to pass messages. You would order a tussie-mussie for your lady friend with certain flowers that would tell her how you really feel about her. They also seem to have been worn about the bosum area as nosegays to ward off the more awful odors of the day as well as a way of expressing yourself. Sort of like wearing certain colored bandana’s in gay clubs these days.

Somewhere along the line the word settled on the spelling TuzzyMuzzy and came to mean – in a vulgar slang sort of way – vagina! Well, you can sort of see it – a bunch of flowers peeking out of a small conical vase or tightly wrapped in that shape in a lacy doily…

William Dugdale was a famous publisher of porn in London in the 1840s. One of his titles was a song book entitled The Tuzzymuzzy Songster. That’s too rich – I’ve gotta write a story to go with that title.

But I thought you fans of Victoriana and porn and TuzzyMuzzy might get a little kick out of this bit of trivia.

When the word was revived in the 1940s to mean a sort of nosegay sort of bouquet it was spelled tussie-mussie which I suppose was to distinguish it from other, shady, sorts of meanings.

Category: Odd bits
Tags: Victorian trivia