pubes

From Latin pubes (“the hair which appears on the body at the age of puberty, the genitals”), from pubes, puber (“grown up, of mature age; of plants, downy, pubescent”); see puberty.

• IPA^(key): /pjuːbiz/
• Rhymes: -uːbiz

pubes

1. plural of pubis; pubic bones.
2. (plural only) The pubic hair.
3. (plural only) The pubic region.

• IPA^(key): /ˈpjuːbz/
• Rhymes: -uːbz

pubes

1. plural of pube

It is not uncommon today for even educated people to be familiar with the back-formed sense of pubes and its singular, pube, while being unaware of the original sense, declension, and etymology. Whereas the original sense occurs mostly in medical English rather than lay English, the newer sense is widely encountered in casual online culture, despite that it is informal enough not to be used in formal-register lay vocabulary.

• See also Thesaurus:pubic hair

• puberty
• pubic

• pubes in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.
• pubes in The Century Dictionary, New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911.

• EPUBs, epubs

pubes

1. plural of pube (pubic bones)

pubes

1. plural of pube (crab lice)

Possible connection with puer, pūpa, pūsus, putus.

• pūber
• pūbis

• (Classical) IPA^(key): /ˈpuː.bes/, [ˈpuː.bɛs]

pūbes (genitive pūberis); third declension

1. adult
2. pubescent
3. ripe
4. downy (of plants)

Third declension, non-i-stem (genitive plural in -um).

• pūbertas
• pūbēscō

• Portuguese: púbere

From pūbes (“adult”).

pūbes f (genitive pūbis); third declension

1. youth
2. youthfulness
3. pubic hair

Third declension.

• Portuguese: pube, pubes, púbis

• pubes1 in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• pubes2 in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• pubes in Charlton T. Lewis (1891) An Elementary Latin Dictionary, New York: Harper & Brothers
• pubes in Gaffiot, Félix (1934) Dictionnaire Illustré Latin-Français, Hachette
• pubes in Harry Thurston Peck, editor (1898) Harper's Dictionary of Classical Antiquities, New York: Harper & Brothers
• pubes in William Smith et al., editor (1890) A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities, London: William Wayte. G. E. Marindin