Saturday, February 10, 2007

Like Kissing Your Cousin

Following on from an old post at Vunex, a thought on the overworked subject of kissing:

I have heard in the past young male Israelis use the slang term "bussa" to describe a masculine, aggressive, slap-you-on-the-back type of kiss (given to a friendly male on the cheek, or a startled female on the lips).

I had assumed that this term came (possibly through one of the Romance languages) from the Latin "basium".

However, yesterday I read in a language column in the newspaper that it in fact comes from the Arabic. Apparently in Arabic, "bussa" is also one of a few variants for "kiss" (another of which is "qubla").

Does anyone know if there is some connection between the Arabic and the Latin, or if the similarity is pure coincidence?

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