σκρόφα
What a great word. It sounds as if it means something bad and indeed it does. If you didn’t speak Greek or any of the Romance languages, some rogue might be able to convince you that putana meant something nice like a species of pear or a child’s toy. It has a nice sound, whereas even the most naïve among us would never associate ‘scrofa’ with anything like a pear.
It’s a word I have known for some time, but not one that I use (except when talking about one of the neighbours). Anyway, I went to the fishmongers yesterday to buy τσιπούρα (bream). The fish on display had both their Greek and zoological names. For example, the scorpion fish told me that he was a σκορπιός in Greek but also a proud scorpaena scrofa in Latin. I just had to find out the original meaning.
Though not in Liddell & Scott’s Greek-English Lexicon, σκρόφα was borrowed a long time ago and it has survived unaltered since Hellenistic times from the Latin scrofa, quite an achievement when one considers that hospitium morphed into σπίτι. In Latin scrofa means a wild boar. In Greek it originally meant a sow. https://el.wiktionary.org tells us it is 1) a synonym of γουρούνα, 2) an insult aimed at women and 3) a synonym of πουτάνα. SLANG.gr says that a σκρόφα is Η απαίσια (ψυχή τε και σώματι) γυναίκα = a woman who is awful in both mind and body. I love the pretentious use of the dative case. It goes on to give this example:
Ήταν μια μαλακισμένη στο ταμείο της εφορίας, περιμέναμε είκοσι άτομα ουρά, και αυτή έβαφε τα νύχια της, η σκρόφα… There was this stupid bitch at the counter in the tax office, twenty of us in the queue, and the scrubber was varnishing her nails.
So, σκρόφα is a synonym of πουτάνα and καριόλα, a deeply unpleasant woman, a scrubber, and maybe it also carries the suggestion of poor personal hygiene.
Incidentally, a γουρούνα also means a quadbike.