Sometimes words just fail me ...

Anybody, who is truly spotless, will feel, that the world around him is dirty.

Yes indeed - dear old Aunt Fanny! Of course Fanny is (or was) simply a diminutive form of Frances, as in Fanny Price, heroine of Jane Austen's Mansfield Park.

I remember reading a delightful book called The Ghost of Thomas Kempe by Penelope Lively, in which a young boy finds a hundred-year-old diary written by a character known as Aunt Fanny. You can imagine the hilarity that caused with my class of 12 and 13 year-olds.

I once read a book, set in England some time in the nineteenth century, I believe, wherein was mentioned someone dining on "cock-a-leekie soup". Later on, when my mother and I were having a conversation about cooking, I mentioned it and she thought I was using some sort of euphemism for something else and got angry! I explained and she wouldn't believe me and I had to search around for the book (I found a copy in the local public library) and show it to her. Since it used the phrase in context, she had to accept it but she wasn't happy about it (my mom hated to be proven wrong, especially by me. ).

My mother had one in a trunk in our attic and when I saw it, I asked what it was and she told me. Since we lived in California, there was little need to have them as the weather is quite temperate and they were pretty much out of fashion by the sixties anyway. Still that was one of the first images that came to mind when someone would use the word "muff" later and then, of course the other definition took precedence.

One can still use a muff to keep one's hands warm these days, but it's a lot more impractical. And she usually doesn't like it...

Frances (Fanny) Bathurst is a character in one of my stories set in 19th Century England.

I am reminded of Queen's song of the 90, Fat bottom girls. That was a huge hit in the States and no one gave it a second thought.
Islandcarol

The character of Winnie in Ginger Meggs (old Australian comic strip) was rarely without her hand warmer, referred to as a muff in the comic, but they were written in the 20's and the 30's mostly.

Well, IIRC that song was from the late 1970s, and young adult males back then seemed to give it quite a bit of thought: "Fat-bottom girls, they make the rockin' world go 'round."

I remember a friend of my cousin's teasingly telling him that "You've been dating a lot of fat-bottom girls lately," after he'd played the song on a jukebox.

The novel Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure, subject of a key U.S. Supreme Court ruling on obscenity during the 1960s, had the alternate title Fanny Hill, taken from its protagonist.

There's apparently a German female athlete (skier, perhaps) named Fanny Chmelar... --C.K.

Radio Times, eager as ever to protect the delicate sensibilities of its readers, recently asterisked the word 'd**khead'. I wrote to them saying I was looking forward to seeing listings for screenings of D**k Tracy and Fun with D**k and Jane, and programmes presented by David D**kinson. Oddly, they didn't print my letter...

But that's a different context. For example, as George Carlin said, "It's okay to prick your finger, but you'd better not finger your pr**k."