Daily Mail

Bag of Arse

Etymology of “cul-de-sac”

1. Old French roots

   • cul (“arse” or more politely “bottom”)

   • de (“of”)

   • sac (“bag” or “sack”)

2. Literal sense

   • “Bottom of a bag” – the image of a pouch you can’t climb out of

3. Metaphoric shift

   • By the 14th century used in French for a lane that stops abruptly

   • Borrowed into English in the 18th century with exactly that sense: a street with no exit

4. Modern English usage

   • Always written cul-de-sac (never “codisac”)

   • Idiomatic meaning: a dead-end street or, figuratively, any situation with no way forward

5. Current-day spin (Daily Mail)

   • “Bag of arse” logic: they’ve gone down a dead end & now hail the postcode as proof of virtue

Stay frosty people. 😉

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