subs. (old).—The female pudendum: see MONOSYLLABLE. [HALLIWELL, s.v. TWATETH: ‘A buck or doe TWATETH, i.e., makes a noise at rutting time.’] Whence (venery) TO GO TWAT-RAKING = to copulate: see RIDE; TWAT-RUG = the female pubic hair: see FLEECE.
fl. 1650. R. FLETCHER, Poems, 104.
| Give not male names then to such things as thine, | |
| But think thou hast two TWATS o wife of mine. |
1727. BAILEY, English Dictionary, s.v. TWAT. Pudendum muliebre.
1890. Century Dictionary, s.v. TWAT [Found by Browning in the old royalist rimes ‘Vanity of Vanities,’ and on the supposition that the word denoted ‘a distinctive part of a nun’s attire that might fitly pair off with the cowl appropriated to a monk,’ so used by him in his ‘Pippa Passes’].
