Joanna says:

<<
You are damn' right, Kasper, I am 3 times as old as you (so what?) -- but I
don't see that because any word has been taken over by the younger
generation in an extended meaning, the original meaning sould instantly be
nullified.
>>

Interesting what does and doesn't take off.  Slightly in parallel to "pussy" 
(as I'm reminded, reading the extended version of one of the songs in the 
Francis Place Manuscript, of which Place gives two stanzas) is the use of 
the term "Robin" (yes, I ought to know!) for the penis.  I'm not sure how 
extended this was -- it occurs in that sense of George Gascoigne's "Lullaby" 
in the late 16thC, and again, vide Place, in the 1780s.  But between?  Was 
it simply not recorded, or what?

Certainly it's virtually impossible to use "gay" now, or I'd guess since at 
least the eighties, if not before, without the sexual meaning being 
dominant.  Whereas occasions when "raspberry" comes out oddly -- was it 
Tennyson who said, "She gave me a wild, sweet, raspberry"? -- are relatively 
rare.

As to "pussy", I'd agree that with Joanna that in the sexual sense it's more 
American than English (though not as awkward as the different meanings given 
to "fanny" in the two countries).  Beale/Patridge gives it as mid 19thC+, 
for the vagina, which is silly, as Farmer and Henley in _Slang and Its 
Analogues_ cite an instance from 1664.  But there are more citations for 
"puss" = "a woman" (generally; sometimes a loose woman).  Thus the 
sexualised meaning of "pussy" way predates the sexualisation of "gay", and 
if it hasn't become the dominant form by now, it ain't, pace Kasper, never 
going to be so.

<<
The really interesting question this is all skirting around is what counts
as 'real' meaning, when so many words are shifting in application, depending
at least in part upon who's applying them.
>>

'Twas ever thus.  What did an Elizabethan think of when someone said to him 
or her, "we die, and fade away into nothing"?  The expense of spirit was 
ever expended in a waste of shame.

Indeed, "the 'real' meaning [of a word]" doesn't seem to me to make any 
sense.  There is no such thing as an Absolute Platonic Word.  And even, as 
all such statements should be time-stamped, the "real" meaning of a word in, 
say, 1820.  ("Blowen" was defined with at least three different meaning at 
that point in time, with Absolute Assurance that it meant (a) a prostitute; 
(b) the female associate of a highwayman; or (c) simply a female.  As to a 
flash blowen, well, I ask you ... )

Further, you can't, even more narrowly, talk of the "real" meaning of a word 
as it's used by any particular speaker or writer in any specific context.  I 
think Saussure is the closest to being right here, when he said that words 
gained their meanings by what they related to, either through association or 
opposition.  (I'm probably misquoting and misrepresenting the +Course in 
General Linguistics+ pretty badly here, but as that work is about as 
variously misinterpreted as the Bible, I'm in good company.)  "Pussy" as 
part of the range cat/tabby/feline/ and contrasted to dog/rock/sunset draws 
on one range of meanings, when used in a context which would call up 
associations with "muff", "beaver" [see Farmer and Henley on The 
Monosyllable for a fuller list] another.

Slippery things, dem words, like a flock of silly sheep.

<<
 I mean, should we bear root
meanings in mind,
>>

Yes, but they don't define the meaning -- that's the delapidated old genetic 
fallacy.  Saussure pretty thoroughly put the boot into that silliness when 
he pointed to the difference between synchronic and diachronic.  And as his 
day-job was herding IndoEuropean verb forms, he'd have known about (and 
respected) root meaning if anyone did.

Pretty radical, that old Swiss bo'yo.  I wonder if he were a member of the 
Spartan Brotherhood, or the Empire Club?  Might have been so, or mibee not.

<<
or the one(s) Shakespeare used,
>>

Who she?

<<
or polite usage a
generation ago,
>>

Again, this needs a time stamp -- Kasper's generation or ours?

Or Kitchener's.  "Your king and country needs you," changed its meaning, in 
retrospect, after the Somme.

<<
or current slang?
>>

Well, if anyone slapped me on the puss fur the way ah spoke, I'd pit the 
heid oan him, an rearrange his kisser but.

<<
I would like to have all of these open to
me.
>>

You have my gracious permission to allow yourself all the available meanings 
of any word that you can utter.  <g>

Rodent