...are the ways that items whose common name becomes a euphemism for female genitalia (or for any other euphemized class) themselves will sometimes receive a new term to avoid or euphemize the association.

Case in point: "bunny". This term seems to originate as an attempt to avoid the term "cunny", which, in addition to being a diminutive-ized version of "cunt", is also a dialectal variant pronunciation for "coney", a term for "rabbit". I laugh my self sick inside every time I hear an affectionate parent telling their child, who is playing at being certain animals, that they are a "cute little bunny" or something similar. ^^;

Then, of course, there is the wonderful term "donkey" (since Angharad brought up fannies and the differences in American and British understandings thereof... :-P . ). The earlier term was, of course, "ass", which had nothing to do with "arse". As, however, r-lenition (weakening) began to affect certain dialects of English, the pronunciation of the two began to approximate. In order to avoid saying the one meanning "buttocks" when intending the animal, someone used the euphemism "dun-monkey" which, in turn and over time was reduced to "donkey". ^__^

Or at least those are the more credible (and believable) stories, according to my professor in University, in the class on this very subject I helped him with.

Of interest, in tests measuring the degree of discomfort (usually in terms of an initial hesitation before use) of people using various terms, in the U.S. "cunt" (and most of its more common euphemisms and even technical terms) ranks nearly as high as or higher than "nigger" (among all speakers; "nigga" was treated separately, and showed predictable patterns re "race"). There was a significantly longer pause for those terms than for any other "taboo" terms tested (admittedly, the difference was in minute fractions of a second, but there was a clear difference in the timing). I haven't seen results from similar tests with speakers of other Englishes or among L2 speakers of English, so I can't really say anything authoritative about those, nor about similar terms in other languages, though I imagine that there would be a similar trend with words that are similarly stigmatized.

-Liz, who thoroughly enjoys the whole topic of linguistic avoidance strategies. ^___^