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Tattoo

From The Brill Dictionary of Religion
1. ‘Tattoo,’ from the East Polynesian tatau , to ‘strike correctly,’ denotes a pattern, image, or ornament, scratched, pricked, or struck through the human epidermis. With scar tattooing , used especially with darker skin, the skin is seared or scratched with an instrument (fragment of stone, bamboo or bone knife, razor-blade). Healing is delayed (rubbing in of ashes, clay), in order that a pattern of swelling may emerge. With color or pricking tattooing (used especially with fair skin), dyed material is brought in contact with, and introduced under, the epidermis through the use of toothed wooden hammers (today usually an electric tattooing needle). Unlike body-painting, tattooing leaves an enduring mark on the body, changing it in a lasting way. The word tatau was imported to Europe from Tahiti by English seafarer James Cook. The connection between nudity and ornament on the body among the inhabitants of the South Sea told Europeans of ‘wildness,’ and awakened a certain longing…
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Full text Article Tattoos

From Encyclopedia of Women's Health
Tattoos have been used in many cultures to identify beauty, position or status, and worth. They mark rites of passage, such as a life cycle event (marriage, pregnancy, childbirth, death), change in an individual's social position, the progression from childhood to puberty, and the initiation into…
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Full text Article tattoo

From Word Origins
English has two words tattoo . The older, ‘military display’ [17], was borrowed from a Dutch word, taptoe , that means literally ‘tap to’, that is, ‘shut the tap’ - a signal to shut off the taps of the beer barrels at closing time in the taverns. By the time it reached English it was being…
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Full text Article TATTOOS

From The Multimedia Encyclopedia of Women in Today's World
Photo credit: Bridget via Wikimedia Commons
Tattooing is especially popular among teenagers and young adults. When young people are learning to assert their independence, it is thought that tattoos may provide a way to express a sense of self in a seemingly changing and insecure world. Contrary to stereotypes, most tattooed young people are…
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Full text Article Tattoos

From The International Encyclopedia of Human Sexuality
Young men have traditionally received...
BDSM exoticism tattoo When tattooing was rediscovered by Europeans during the Age of Exploration, tattooed bodies were seen as exotic, and sometimes erotic. Nonindustrialized peoples wearing tattoos were displayed as sideshow attractions in Europe and the United States, and when Europeans and…
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Full text Article Tattoos

From The SAGE Encyclopedia of the Sociology of Religion
The practice of tattooing the body with permanent ink—marks and designs—dates back at least 5300 years, to Ötzi (The Iceman), found buried in glacier ice in the Otzal Alps. Scientists mapping his mummified corpse, discovered in 1991, have now identified 61 tattoos. Biblical (Leviticus 19:28) and…
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Full text Article tattoo

From Library of Health and Living: The Encyclopedia of Men's Health
A permanent body marking created by injecting pigmented dyes into the dermal (innermost) layer of the skin, a process of making thousands of tiny puncture wounds and filling them with the pigments that then remain in the cells after the wounds heal. The pigmentation remains visible beneath the outer…
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Full text Article TATTOOS

From 100 Ideas that Changed Street Style
The nineteenth- to twentieth-century Western association of the tattoo with criminals, seafarers and deviants, rather than its more ancient history among different peoples, arguably made it a taboo there for the breaking. ‘It is,’ as American socialite said in the 1890s, ‘the most vulgar and…
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Full text Article tattoo

From The Hutchinson Unabridged Encyclopedia with Atlas and Weather Guide
Permanent mark or design under the top layer of skin made by the injection of coloured pigments. Tattoos have been used for a variety of reasons: to identify slaves or criminals; to signify marital availability, skill as a warrior, or social class, clan, or group affiliation; for ritual or magical…
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Full text Article tattoo.

From The Oxford Companion to Ships and the Sea
(1) A traditional skin decoration for seamen, initially encountered by Captain Cook in 1769 during his first voyage of circumnavigation. In an entry of his journal he wrote: ‘ “Tattow” as it is called in their [the natives of Tahiti] language, this is done by inlaying the Colour of black under their…
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Full text Article tattoo

From The Columbia Encyclopedia
the marking of the skin with punctures into which pigment is rubbed. The word originates from the Tahitian tattau [to mark]. The term is sometimes extended to scarification, which consists of skin incisions into which irritants may be rubbed to produce a permanent raised scar. Tattooing is an…
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