Talk:Womb

Why redirect?

I restored the redirect on this page to uterus. It is not useful to have two pages with identical content. I noticed that the only difference in the "womb" article was that the word "uterus" was swapped out for "womb".

If it is important to be using both words, then it is useful to do that in a unified article. Having duplicated articles in more than one location causes problems.

The way it is set-up now makes sense, I think.

1. people entering "womb" OR "uterus" as a search term will find what they want
2. the existing article at uterus also uses the word "womb" so it is unlikely anybody will be confused by the language used in the article.

Tobycat 21:27, 26 July 2005 (UTC)

Let's disambiguate rather than redirect, and here is why

The word "womb" should be a Disambiguation rather than a straight Redirect. Here is why.

In present-day use, "womb" is indeed a synonym for "uterus," and this has always been at least one of its uses. In archaic use, however, the word "womb" could also refer to the stomach of a female, as long as its owner was still female. I Italicized the word "stomach" because I'm referring to the actual digestive chamber, not to the erroneous use of "stomach" to describe a pregnant uterus. ("With a baby in her stomach"--Hopefully not, but people say that...)

In Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, as Romeo is about to climb into Juliet's tomb to poison himself, there is one interesting line where he personifies his upcoming suicide as a female monster who is about to eat him. He speaks of entering her "maw" (mouth) and addresses her referring to the grave as "thy womb of death" [Italics added].

I suggest that we make a Disambiguation Page where "womb" can go to "uterus" or "stomach," perhaps with a parenthetical note that the latter use is archaic. The Mysterious El Willstro (talk) 01:51, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

Disagree. Instead, why not put a short etymological paragraph or subsection on the page for uterus, which can hyperlink to stomach. Even include a sentence on metaphorical uses of the word womb. That would solve all the problems that have been raised.

I must say though, I think yours was a very weird suggestion. It's very improbable that anybody who wants information on the stomach would try to find it by querying its archaic name; anybody using the modern-english wikipedia will surely instead start with common words like belly or stomach. Also, when you say "stomach", I think what you mean is technically more general than just the stomach itself, probably more like the abdomen.

Also, I dispute your account of the etymology; according to [1] the word uterus (not only womb) also originally nonspecifically described the parts of the body that bellow out in shape (regardless whether due to digestion of a large meal or to pregnancy or to the diaphragm motions of respiration; they all corresponded to what we now call belly/abdomen). This contradicts the distinction you make between womb and uterus.

As for Shakespeare, I'm no expert, but couldn't that be interpreted differently? Could it just be saying that the grave symbolises the commencement (maybe even the birth canal) of life's end? Or likening lying cramped in the coffin to how a foetus rests locked in the womb?

Anyway, a page Womb (disambiguation) already exists and is linked from the top of the uterus page. Cesiumfrog (talk) 06:12, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

None of that would explain why the term "womb" has always been exclusively female, were it not originally coined to mean either uterus or digestive chamber that happens to be owned by a female. Terms such as "chamber of the little winds" ("ventriculum" in Latin--a reference to the abdomen's use in breathing) have been historically used in a sex-neutral manner. For all my readings of Shakespeare's plays and even of ancient literature (I studied 3 and a half years of classical Latin), however, I haven't seen the term "womb" or anything that unambiguously translates to it used in reference to a male. The Mysterious El Willstro (talk) 03:06, 22 April 2011 (UTC)