My First Time (Q & A)

Way back in my youth, somewhere in my early teens, my oldest friend (Denise) asked me a question for which I had no answer. It plagued me. It plagued her. We set about to find the answer to her query. We asked all the adults in our grasp, we consulted the books in my burgeoning library, we visited the actual library, and we even asked a teacher or two. Not one source was able to answer her question.

She soon lost her eagerness to solve this puzzle. It, however, cropped up in my mind through the passing years as an unsolved mystery.

I needed to know, not because the question burned within my soul, but because no one knew the answer! I thought that someone, somewhere must know the answer! Good Lord! We made up our own languages here on Earth; surely the meaning of the expression "pew" or "p.u." had origins in some land, in some language.

Enter the internet of the 90s. Information at one's fingertips. I took up my old task to search the meaning of "pew". Alas, I found it and ended the adolescent wondering of my paisano.

The closest answer I found was (the belief) that the phrase originated from the word "putrid". The state of decay; foul; rotten--origin, Latin: putridus--meaning rotten. Everything gets shortened over time and this definition seemed adequate. 

I wonder if Denise remembers any part of this little mystery.