nothing purer than your cunt.However, you go to the baths without covering the part you should; if you have any modesty, transfer your loincloth to your face!") The following obscene poetic graffito from Pompeii is written in the trochaic septenarius metre: ("A hairy cunt is fucked much better than a smooth one:at the same time it retains the heat and at the same time it brushes the cock") The word occurs in literary Latin, most frequently in Martial; it denotes the person who performs the action, not the action itself as in modern English, where it is not obscene but technical. The term comes from the Latin word for the vulva () and the verb "to lick" (, cf. "tongue"). Synonyms and metaphors These include , "indentation", and , "ditch"; also or "pot". The modern scientific or polite words vulva and vagina both stem from Latin, but originally they had different meanings. The word is the Latin word for scabbard or sword-sheath. (or ) in classical Latin generally signified the womb, especially in medical writing, and also it is also common in the Vetus Latina (pre-Jerome) version of the Bible. The meanings of and have changed by means of metaphor and metonymy, respectively. Other words for the womb are , (in later Latin), ("belly"), and (also "belly"). At Juvenal 6.129, however, the word is used of the vagina or clitoris of the (allegedly) nymphomaniac empress Messalina, who is described as departing from a session in a brothel: ("still burning with the excitement of her rigid 'volva',tired out by men but still not satisfied, she departs") In the Romance languages is preserved in almost every Romance language: e.g. French , Catalan , Spanish , Galician , Portuguese , (South) Sardinian , Old Italian . In Calabrian dialects the forms (m.) and (f.) are used as synonyms of "stupid, dumb"; the same is true of the French and in fact this has become the primary meaning of the words, both eclipsing the genital sense and significantly reducing the word's obscenity. In Portuguese it has been transferred to the feminine gender; the form is also attested in Pompeian graffiti and in some late Latin texts. : the clitoris The ancient Romans had medical knowledge of the clitoris, and their native word for it was . This appears to have been one of the most obscene words in the entire Latin lexicon. It is