by Ralph Keyes
Double entendreing this way has kept pace with the times. Only the nomenclature changes, though not always for the better. (See Lady Gaga’s “I wanna take a ride on your disco stick” as well as Bloodhound Gang’s “Foxtrot Uniform Charlie Kilo,” a nonsense title that only means anything if abbreviated, and which features the refrain “Put the you know what in the you know where.”) And it isn’t just song lyrics. When analyzing Fiona Walker’s 1996 novel Well Groomed, linguist Kerry Linfoot-Ham found not just the expected candor of sex representation but circumlocutions such as a lights-out act, the big event, and steamy scenes.
Ever since Erica Jong’s 1973 bestseller Fear of Flying portrayed a sexually adventurous woman enjoying a “zipless fuck,” zipless has been the go-to euphemism for spontaneous sexual activity. Based on the popularity of a 1972 pornographic movie by that title, deep throat became euphemistic for oral sex (as well as for the secret sources of journalists). Such movies were called “adult entertainment.” As a result, the word adult became a euphemism for pornography or for sex itself. (“We engaged in some adult activity.”)
Because porne is Greek for “prostitute,” and pornographos for “depictions of prostitutes,” “pornography” originally referred to writing about whores. Since pornography is seldom discussed openly, least of all by its consumers, euphemisms such as plain brown wrapper (for the way pornographic material was discreetly mailed) were common during the pre-Internet era. In the United States, such materials were kept hidden beneath a counter; in the United Kingdom, on a hard-to-see high shelf. As a result under-the-counter became an American euphemism for pornography, top-shelf its British counterpart. More recently, sexually explicit media has established its sterile presence as a euphemism for pornographic material. Some make a distinction between pornography (dirty) and erotica (clean). Of course, one person’s erotica is another person’s pornography. Or, to put it somewhat differently, if it turns me on, it’s erotic; if it turns you on, it’s pornographic.
Initializing has begun to rear its boring head in this area as in so many others. “Oral sex” begat blow job which begat bj. (In a sexual diary, one young New Yorker talks of “eye-bj-ing” a man.) Other modernisms such as interrelate, sexual penetration, and penile insertive behavior are also sterilizing our sexual lexicon. Nonetheless, we do have some fun new sexual euphemisms unknown to our ancestors: donating DNA, exchanging chromosomes, and horizontal aerobics. But Grandpa and Grandma had some colorful terms of their own such as hoochie coochie, hanky-panky, and roll in the hay. Among Britons, How’s your father? has long been a euphemism for sex, though no one is sure why.
Hooking up is the most ambiguous of sexual euphemisms, referring to everything from a kiss good night to five-star sex. Recently, this expression has moved more clearly into the sexual column. There was little question about what ABC-TV’s Jake Tapper had in mind when—referring to his single date with White House intern Monica Lewinsky—the news correspondent said he’d been looking forward to a “no-frills hookup.” (For the record, Tapper confessed that his date with Lewinsky consisted of dinner followed by “a very innocent good-bye.”) In the latest twist, “hookup” has become a noun referring to a sex partner. (“I ran into an ex-hookup yesterday.”) Or an adjective, as in a hookup encounter.
Sex provides unparalleled opportunities for roll-your-own euphemisms, including ones that are spontaneous When an eighteenth-century French noblewoman confessed to her priest that she had “esteem” for a young member of the court, the priest responded, “And how many times has he esteemed you?” In Angela’s Ashes, memoirist Frank McCourt recalled the many nights their mother would tell him and his brothers to go to bed while she took the landlord of their squalid flat a mug of tea in the loft above them. “We often fall asleep before she goes up,” he writes, “but there are nights we hear them talking, grunting, moaning…. I think they’re at the excitement up there.”
What was his mother supposed to tell her sons? Parents are faced with the perennial challenge of talking about sex euphemistically with their children. “When a mommy and a daddy love each other very much, they have a special cuddle” is one alternative. Or, “Sometimes we kiss and hug for a very long time.” Here as elsewhere, the Internet has pitched in. Musing about what parents might tell their children Lady Gaga means when she says she wants to “take a ride on your disco stick,” one blogger suggested they say that “disco stick” refers to a microphone on a stand, “so ‘take a ride on your disco stick’ means Lady Gaga wants to sing at the mic.” Or, that disco sticks are drum sticks hammering out a disco beat, “so saying she wants to ‘ride the disco stick’ means she wants to play the drums.” Or, because disco sticks glow like Star Wars light sabers, “saying she wants to ‘ride the disco stick’ means she wants to fight with light sabers.”
Promiscuity
In the not-too-distant past, women whom today we might simply call “sexually active” were called “sluts,” “floozies,” “hussies,” “strumpets,” “tramps,” or “trollops.” They were loose, fallen, round-heeled, women of easy virtue, or simply easy women. These women slept around. They’d been around the block. At the very least, they were promiscuous.
“Nympho” was a label commonly hung on such women, short for “nymphomania,” from the French nymphomanie, a term coined in the late-eighteenth century for “a female disease characterized by morbid and uncontrollable sexual desire.” Though of dubious scientific validity, this notion caught on with the public. It seemed like an up-to-date, medically sound, and rather titillating way to describe women who engaged in sex freely. The idea that there might be nymphomaniacs in our midst excited lots of interest, among men especially. The male equivalent, satyriasis, was seldom noted. Aren’t all men satyrs? So we liked to think. Men who had many sex partners were just behaving normally. Their female counterparts, on the other hand, had a medical problem.
As Carol Groneman points out in her well-researched book Nymphomania: A History, the meaning of this concept changed along with our evolving attitudes toward sex. Groneman considers her subject a metaphor, one that “embodies the fantasies and fears, the anxieties and dangers connected to female sexuality through the ages.” Although horror and disgust were the initial response to the notion of nymphomania, by the mid-twentieth century sex researcher Alfred Kinsey had defined a nymphomaniac as “someone who has more sex than you do.” Today, some even use “nympho” as a teasing term for women who enjoy sex without guilt. Such women are now considered no worse than sexually active, sexually expressive, or sexually adventurous. Like priapic men, they might be enjoying some recreational sex. They’re sex positive. You could call them polyamorous free spirits. They enjoy a European lifestyle.
The euphemisms we use for sexual activity in general have lost their judgmental flavor. “Living in sin” first gave way to without benefit of clergy, then shacking up, and finally living together, which is barely a euphemism at all. Those who engage in the casual encounters that traditionally have been called “one-night stands” can today participate in short-term mating. Distributive sex is a lofty term for mating that used to be considered promiscuous. Scholars who study what laypeople call “adultery” or “infidelity” (or “cheating” or “stepping out”) call it extrapair sex.
The term “sex addict” is a particularly interesting indicator of changing values, since it implies that those who couple compulsively with multiple partners aren’t responsible for their own actions. Even though there is little more clinical basis for this notion than there was for nymphomania, it suits our current perspective to imagine that a predilection for constant sex with many partners is a craving that can’t be controlled. The concept of sex addiction recast obsessive sexual activity as a disease, not a sin. The fact that, unlike “nymphomania,” “sex addiction” can apply to men and women alike is a plus in egalitarian times.
The Solitary Vice
In a rare, delicate reference to female masturbation, a French exile named Moreau de St. Méry wrote about postrevolutiona
ry women in Philadelphia who were stranded in barren marriages, “These women, without real love and without passions, give themselves up at an early age to the enjoyment of themselves.” (The Frenchman didn’t explain how he knew this.)
This depiction of masturbation was pretty mild for its time. Since fondling one’s own genitals was seen as a straight shot to hell or insanity or at least hairy palms, it was called self-abuse, self-pollution, or self-defilement. (When he first heard of masturbation in the early 1950s, my brother Gene looked it up in an old dictionary. There the practice was defined as “self-pollution,” a definition Gene creatively misread as “self-pollination.”) The very word “masturbate” most likely derives from a Latin root that essentially means “defile by hand.” At best, our ancestors referred to playing with one’s genitals as the solitary vice or the secret vice. Francis Grose defined “toss off” as manual pollution. William Byrd called his own self-indulgence manual uncleanness. Puritans in Massachusetts considered it “the hideous sin of Onanism.” This alluded to Genesis 38:9 wherein, when engaged sexually with the widow of his brother Er, Onan “spilled it [his semen] on the ground.” (What Onan most likely engaged in was what today we’d call coitus interruptus.) In the early-eighteenth century, a popular English tract was titled “ONANIA, or the Heinous Sin of Self-Pollution, and All its frightful Consequences, in both Sexes, Consider’d, with Spiritual and Physical Advice to those who have already injur’d themselves by this abominable Practice.”
Psychologist G. Stanley Hall warned Victorian era Americans about the consequences of masturbation; these included baldness, chronic coughing, digestive problems, and “a stooping and enfeebled gait.” Needless to say, Hall’s conclusions were not the result of controlled studies. The eminent psychologist was particularly concerned about hand-in-pocket genital play by boys. He thought that the pockets of their trousers “should be placed well to the side and not too deep,” and “habitually keeping the hands in the pockets should be discouraged.” Professor Hall probably never heard the vernacular name for this practice—pocket pool (or billiards)—and most likely would not have been amused if he had.
As tolerance for onanism grew, the flavor of euphemisms referring to this practice lightened up. Following World War II, it was called simply playing with yourself, relieving yourself, jacking off, or beating off. Soldiers called it blanket drill. Men who engaged in this practice were milkmen. Or, in England, wankers. By now, euphemisms for male masturbation have grown positively playful: milk the snake, stroke the chicken, crank your shank, yank your crank, varnish your pole. Men and women alike engage in killing kittens (based on another era’s warning that “Every time you masturbate, God kills a kitten”). A shorter list for women includes pet the poodle, flick the bean, or, in China, stir the bean curd.
Since masturbation has come to be seen as a benign, nearly universal, and even desirable entrée on the sexual menu of men and women alike, self-pleasure has replaced more pejorative euphemisms. So have finding out alone, touching yourself, or simply self-sexuality. Or the altogether neutral sex without a partner.
Alexander Portnoy—the exuberantly self-pleasuring protagonist of Philip Roth’s 1969 novel Portnoy’s Complaint— loaned out his name as a euphemistic allusion to the kind of autoeroticism that involved a manual aid such as raw liver, his own favorite sex aid. Nearly four decades after the publication of Roth’s bestseller, Nancy Franklin wrote in the New Yorker about Jon Stewart’s “masturbatory” delight in the adulation of his Daily Show audience, “as if he were Portnoy and the audience his slab of liver.”
If sex engenders so many euphemisms, what about the body parts involved? Wouldn’t they be prime candidates for euphemistic lingo too? They are. So are bodies as a whole.
4
Anatomy Class
SINCE WE ARE all sensitive about the appearance of our bodies (trust me on this), anatomy provides fertile ground for euphemizing. This topic poses considerable linguistic challenges and always has. “In all manners relating to the human body,” wrote H. L. Mencken several decades ago, “… euphemisms are common and some of them are very old.” At one time, the very word “body” was suspect and gave way to person. (“Contraband was found on her person.”) A woman who grew up in Michigan after World War II recalled that while in grade school, she and her classmates referred to the upper peninsula and lower peninsula of their bodies.
For those whose bodies deviate from the norm—which is to say nearly all of us—euphemisms are welcome. Balding men can be said to have high foreheads. Wrinkled faces feature character lines. Then there’s the matter of weight. When it comes to those whom airlines call people of size, euphemisms are in constant demand. Ever since the Dutch painter Peter Paul Rubens reverently painted women who would today be considered candidates for gastric bypass, Rubenesque has been a polite term for women carrying extra pounds, one with artistic and vaguely erotic overtones. Voluptuous does similar duty, as do shapely, curvaceous, and the Yiddish term zaftig. Pleasingly plump lacks sexy flavor, as do buxom, generously proportioned, big-boned, and fluffy. Such terms do keep us from having to say “fat,” though. In a pinch, there’s also ample, plus size, or queen size.
In one of Alexander McCall Smith’s mystery novels, Precious Ramotswe, the “traditionally built” Botswana detective, is described as “more traditionally built than ever—a wide expanse of woman, bulging like the continent of Africa itself.” When Mma Ramotswe is told politely by her mechanic-husband that the suspension problem in her minivan may be due to “distribution of load,” she ponders this message, then says, “And the load, I take it… is me?”
For their part, men needn’t be “fat” when they can be burly, hefty, portly, rotund, or stocky. Sturdy and stout have the advantage of suggesting stalwart. Stout also refers to a rich type of beer and to a courageous sort of man, one who is stouthearted.
Calling ample waists love handles is not gender linked. Nor is bay window for a potbelly, spare tire for an expansive midsection, or well upholstered for the generally overweight. Such terms are usually reserved for men, however. At the other end of the scale, cadaverous women who verge on anorexia can be called willowy, svelte, or simply slender. At worst, they are skinny. Little women are politely called petite, although one small character in a Rona Jaffe novel disdained this adjective as “a euphemism for getting stuck with all the short boys on blind dates.”
“Short” is not a nice word. Among men who don’t feel tall enough, it can be seen as provocative, a fighting word even. Compact is more tactful, as is trim or diminutive. (Vertically challenged is a gag euphemism that I’ve never seen or heard in actual use.) One class of neoeuphemisms consists of words that allude to shortness without spelling it out. Terms such as dapper or natty or scrappy have nothing to do with body size per se but are seldom used for taller men. A description such as “He is thin and spry and has a kindly, elfin air” could only refer to a man who is short. Feisty is often applied to contentious small men but rarely to tall ones. (The etymology of this term is none too flattering. It is based on “feist,” a southernism for a small, yappy dog who has more bark than bite.) At five feet five inches tall, French president Nicholas Sarkozy can be called feisty and is. At six feet six inches tall, his equally contentious predecessor Charles de Gaulle was not. Men like de Gaulle are typically described as stately, distinguished, formidable, or imposing. Imperious is the closest thing to a pejorative allusion to tall men in a society that looks up to them. Tall women are majestic, regal, or Junoesque. Amazonian is ambiguous, a term that can be complimentary or insulting, depending on tone of voice and curl of lip.
Midriffs
When Moreau de St. Méry spent time in America after the revolution, the French exile was struck by how reluctant American women were to mention specific parts of their bodies, even when seeking medical help. A nursing mother he met in Philadelphia had developed painfully cracked nipples. She couldn’t bring herself to tell her doctor what the real problem was, however, instead
saying she had stomach pains. According to St. Méry, American women at this time called the section from waist to feet their “ankles”; and from waist to neck, their “stomach.”
Deciding what name to give the digestive organ in our midsection has long posed problems. Even though this had been called a belly with perfect aplomb for centuries, that word eventually succumbed to bourgeois sensibilities. “Belly” was a perfectly functional word. It just didn’t sound respectable. Under Sophia Hawthorne’s busy blue pencil, “belly” was changed to rotundity or paunch any time it appeared in her husband Nathaniel’s journals. An Englishman named J. S. Buckingham, who visited southern states before the Civil War, heard a preacher in Athens, Georgia, reword the Genesis 3:14 passage in which the serpent is commanded “upon thy belly shalt thou go,” to “upon thy stomach shalt thou go.” When a French physician asked a Victorian Englishwoman if she was feeling pain in her belly, the elderly woman grew flustered. After regaining her composure, she told the doctor that he should avoid using that dreadful word when treating English patients. And what word should he use instead? “Stomach,” the woman replied.
So stomach it was. Once again, a word rooted in Latin (stomachos) elbowed aside a sturdy Anglo-Saxon antecedent. Not even belly dancers were exempt. The first English edition of Oscar Wilde’s 1894 play Salome featured a drawing by Aubrey Beardsley of a topless belly dancer titled “The Stomach Dance.” As late as 1962, during a performance of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Carousel for Britain’s royal family, the line, “Our hearts are warm, our bellies full” became “Our hearts are warm, and we are full.”
Why not simply say “our stomachs are full”? Perhaps because by then the contamination effect had kicked in and “stomach” was a bit outré. Following World War I, H. L. Mencken noted that “stomach” had become an “outlaw” term in England. “No Englishman of good breeding, save he be far gone in liquor, ever mentions his stomach in the presence of women, clergymen, or the Royal family,” wrote Mencken. American stomachs were another matter. According to Mencken, his countrymen discussed this body part as freely as they talked about their business. Moreover, he said, in the United States, “stomach” was used “with a degree of respect verging upon reverence,” doubling “as a euphemism for the whole region from the diaphragm to the pelvic arch.”