A merkin (first use, according to the OED, 1617) is reported to be a pubic wig, worn by prostitutes after shaving their genitalia to eliminate lice or to disguise the marks of syphilis. A similar, though anachronistic, claim not made in OED is that merkins were worn for nude stage appearances. The narrator of Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita (1955) recalls "Although I told myself I was looking merely for a soothing presence, a glorified pot-au-feu, an animated merkin, what really attracted me to Valeria was the imitation she gave of a little girl." This, the first appearance of the word by an established author— one with an unbounded appetite for curiosities of language and culture— demonstrates that "merkin" is not merely an undergraduate prank of the 1950s [1].

The character of President Merkin Muffley in Stanley Kubrick's black comedy Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb is satirically named after this object.

The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary does not have a listing, but Houghton Mifflin's American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 4th edition does, and gives an etymology "alteration of obsolete malkin, lower-class woman, mop, from Middle English; from Malkin, diminutive of the personal name Matilda."[2] The Hutchinson Encyclopaedia 2000 has a brief listing:" pubic wig."

A "short and curly history of the merkin" in The Guardian June 26, 2003 purported to give some merkin history, when "comedy terrorist" Aaron Barschak , in a pink ballgown at the gates of Windsor, raised it to flash a merkin for onlookers. [3]

See also

• Offensive terms for Americans (United States): "merkin" is a slang term for an American

External links

• Straight Dope article on merkins
• [http://www9.general-hosting.com/kctrln/SXM-Info/SXM-Beaches/amc/ Satiric hoax ad from the "American Merkin Company": "Handcrafting merkins for over 150 years"
• Alt-usage-english.org Michael B. Quinion and Ruth Bygrave, "Merkin"
• Maven's Word of the Day: merkin

Reference

• Colin Blakemore and Sheila Jennett, editors, The Oxford Companion to the Body2001: merkin ISBN 019852403X