aunt

It's Sunday afternoon in the Vatican. The pope is working on the Sunday crossword puzzle*. He's got most of the clues, but there's that pesky bottom left corner still to go.
Fortunately, since he's the pope, there's a bunch of cardinals hovering round to offer help. So he asks:

"Excuse me, your eminence, but I need a four-letter word for a 'female relative'".
"Certainly, Holy Father. Tell me, do you know any of the letters?"
"Why yes, actually. This word ends in U-N-T."

A moment's reflection from the cardinal:

"Why yes, Holy Father. I think the word you are looking for must be 'aunt'. A-U-N-T."

Pause.

"Thank you, your eminence."

Longer pause, followed by a sigh:

"Your eminence, do you have an eraser I could borrow?"


*: without invoking his powers of infallibility, natch.

Neat map, but too sparse representation in the Western states, it seems to me, to tell me much about some of these...

See this map for American pronunciation.

Pronounced like the bug. Y'know, I'm just setting the record straight.