Laudator Temporis Acti

The Daily Telegraph, "Prince Harry spotted at strip club" (April 8, 2006):

Britain's Prince Harry visited a strip club with some friends to celebrate the end of his army officer training course, British tabloids have reported.

The third in line to the throne turned down a lap dance with one of the scantily clad girls at the Spearmint Rhino Club, west of London, saying "No thanks, I've got a girlfriend," the Daily Mirror said.

But the dancer, named in the newspaper as Mariella Butkute from Lithuania, said Harry, 21, did let her sit on his lap for a 10-minute chat.

The name Butkute is apparently a real Lithuanian name, not a stage name. But it suggests to an English speaker the words buttocks and cute, i.e. callipygian, and is an apt name for an ecdysiast.

Online Etymology Dictionary, s.v. callipygian:

"of, pertaining to, or having beautiful buttocks," 1800, from Gk. kallipygos, name of a statue of Aphrodite, from kalli-, combining form of kallos "beauty" + pyge "rump, buttocks." Sir Thomas Browne (1646) refers to "Callipygæ and women largely composed behinde."

Online Etymology Dictionary, s.v. ecdysiast:

H.L. Mencken's invented proper word for "strip-tease artist," 1940, from Gk. ekdysis "a stripping or casting off" (used scientifically with ref. to serpents shedding skin or crustacea molting), from ekdyein "to put off" (contrasted with endyo "to put on"), from ex- + dyo "sink, plunge, enter."

I wonder who Prince Harry's friends were. Perhaps Falstaff, Poins, Gadshill, Bardolph, and Peto.

Other posts on this theme:

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• Fell