Wuss
I don't know when or where it started, (my cousins who grew up in Levitton LI use it..)

i think it came from puss-- a variation on scaredee cat..
It seems to mean unmanly, cowardly, wimpish.

a few years ago, at a family reunion picnic, one of my levitton cousins commented that he thought i didn't like him... i explained that i didn't much when he was a teen-- since i thought he and his brothers were provincial. He retaliated (mock) by attacking me with a water gun,(and telling his brothers I called them wusses..) I retaliated by telling him, "it's obvious you still don't know the meaning of provincial!"

The pen might be a mighter sceptor than the sword, but when its words against water guns, you get wet!