Interesting linguistic find from a vet show

I was watching a TV vet program the other day when they told an owner to bring their pet back if a sore “becomes pussy.” The closed captions showed the word pussy, which threw me off at first.

Turns out it’s completely correct. In medical/veterinary English, pussy (pronounced like “puh-see”) is a real adjective meaning “full of or resembling pus.” It’s formed the usual way — pus + -y — and is listed in dictionaries (e.g. Merriam-Webster even gives the example “a pussy wound”).

Most professionals prefer the fancier term purulent to avoid confusion with the other meanings of the word, but “pussy” is still legitimate and occasionally used in spoken advice.

Learned something new today!

The pussy’s pussy was so pussy that the other pussy’s pussy pussy made my pussy’s pussy look almost unpussy by comparison, so I took both pussies’ pussy pussies to the vet before either pussy’s pussy got any pussier.

Smucky wrote: Thu Oct 01, 2026 11:21 pmLearned something new today!

Smucky you did not learn this today. You REMEMBERED it. Every grandmother on the east side been knowin this since the Nixon administration.

8th grade. I slid on the blacktop at kickball and took the skin off my left knee. Two days later it's yellow, it's crusty, and it smells like a warm Faygo. My grandmother was a nurse's aide at Henry Ford Hospital for thirty-one years. She looks at that knee for one second and says "Baby, that is lookin pussy."

I did not know that was medical. I thought she was being mean about my knee.

So Monday I walk in the gym and tell Coach Patricia, in front of the whole class, with total confidence, "Coach, my knee is pussy."

Detention. Note home. Phone call. THEN the nurse looked at it and said "...honey, it IS." So I got a note home from the office AND a note home from the nurse and they both had the same word on em.

Only time in my life I got in trouble and was RIGHT.

Coach Patricia still ain't apologized. I follow her on Facebook. She posted a sunrise this morning with a verse under it. I commented "my knee WAS pussy." Zero likes. A lady from her church wrote "praying for you."

I showed Big Terry that pussy's pussy sentence. He read it twice and said "One of em is a cat."

He's right. It don't help. But he's right.