pubes

noun

pu·​bes ˈpyü-(ˌ)bēz 

plural pubes

: the pubic region

There were dancers who stripped to the buff …, displaying pubes devoid of the smallest hair …

—Colleen McCullough

compare pube, pubis

Examples of pubes in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

But excluding the head, pubes and armpit, the majority are vellus hairs, which are extremely fine, barely visible and not connected to glands below the skin. —Bridget Alex, Discover Magazine, 17 Jan. 2019

The group projects its duality well with Stumpwork’s album art: pubes elegantly spell out the album title (ironically, a reference to embroidery) on foamy bar of soap. —Kory Grow, Rolling Stone, 19 Oct. 2022

Word History

Etymology

borrowed from Latin pūbēs (genitive pūbis) "adult population, group of able-bodied men, age of puberty, pubic region, pubic hair," of uncertain origin

Note: Allied with pūbēs is the presumed s-stem adjective pūbēs, stem pūber- "physically mature, adult"—see puberty. The interrelation of these words and their further etymology are problematic. An s-stem adjective with nominative singular *-ēs, genitive singular *-esos in Indo-European was regularly a compound, which would imply that the original form was impūbēs "not yet having reached puberty, beardless," from which pūbēs would have been back-derived. Chronology of attestation, however, does not support this hypothesis: the derivatives pūbēscere (see pubescent) and pūblicus (see public entry 1) are known from Old Latin, whereas impūbēs is no earlier than Lucretius (1st centuryb.c.). A root *pūb- has no obvious source; *peu̯d^h- or *peu̯b^h- are improbable and give rise to no points of comparison. Douglas Adams ("Sanskrit púmān, Latin pūbēs and related words," Die Sprache, Band 31 [1985], pp. 1-16) suggests as a source an Indo-European adjective *pumró-, derived from a noun *pum- "pubic hair," which he alleges is also seen in Sanskrit púmān "man, male being"; by replacement with full grade ablaut, *pumro- would yield *peu̯mro-, whence, by Latin phonetic developments, *peu̯bro- > pūber-. The -b- would then have been introduced into a putative *(im)pūmēs. Unfortunately, the Sanskrit and Indo-European points in Adams' proposal have been effectively demolished by Karin Stüber (see Die primären s-Stämme des Indogermanischen, Wiesbaden, 2002, p. 43).

First Known Use

1565, in the meaning defined above

Medical Definition

pubes

1 of 2 noun

pu·​bes ˈpyü-(ˌ)bēz 

plural pubes

1

: the hair that appears on the lower part of the hypogastric region at puberty

called also pubic hair

2

: the lower part of the hypogastric region : the pubic region

pubes

2 of 2

plural of pubis