The Body: A Guide for Occupants

by Bill Bryson

The vulva is the complete genital package—vaginal opening, labia, clitoris, and so on. The fleshy mound above the vulva is called the mons pubis. At the top of the vulva itself is the clitoris (probably from a Greek word for “hillock,” but there are other candidates), which is packed with some eight thousand nerve endings—more per unit of area than any other part of the female anatomy—and exists, as far as can be told, only to give pleasure. Most people, including females, are unaware that the visible part of the clitoris, called the glans, is literally only the tip of it. The rest of the clitoris plunges into the interior and extends down both sides of the vagina for about five inches. Until the early twentieth century, “clitoris” seems generally to have been pronounced “kly-to-rus.”