when "intercourse" got funny

[Jonathan Lighter]

As a matter of fact, almost yes.  Wikipedia says that Ginzburg "sought mailing privileges" from both Intercourse and Blue Ball, PA.  He wound up mailing from the less comical Middlesex, NJ.

  The Wikipedia article on the village of Intercourse adroitly observes that the word "intercourse" was once "roughly analogous to the non-sexual...meaning of 'congress' as in 'sexual congress.'"   [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intercourse,_Pennsylvania]

  "Congress" is not a funny word because the phrase "sexual congress" is not in popular use and the word has not been turned into a plain synonym for, um, you know. (The word "Congress" is known to elicit laughter in its political sense, however. Goak.)

  JL




neil <neil at TYPOG.CO.UK> wrote:
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Subject: Re: when "intercourse" got funny
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Wasn't it Ralph Ginzburg who sent his mailings from intercourse, PA between
1962 and 1965-ish?


--Neil Crawford


> From: Charles Doyle
> Reply-To: American Dialect Society
> Date: Wed, 27 Sep 2006 08:43:26 -0400
> To:
> Subject: Re: when "intercourse" got funny
>
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
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> Sender: American Dialect Society
> Poster: Charles Doyle
> Subject: Re: when "intercourse" got funny
>
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>
> Wasn't the mid-1960s about the time when we started hearing the riddle
> (belonging to the genre that was being discussed on this list a few months
> ago), "What's a 4-letter word ending with '-k' that means 'intercourse'?"?
> The wit of the riddle depends on the word's having as its primary (or at least
> its first-thought-of) meaning "copulation" but also on the awareness of "talk"
> as a possible meaning.
>
> --Charlie
> ____________________________________________________
>
> ---- Original message ----
>> Date: Wed, 27 Sep 2006 05:30:46 -0700
>> From: Jonathan Lighter
>> Subject: when "intercourse" got funny
>> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
>>
>> Some months ago it was observed that there was a time when the word
>> "intercourse" could be used with a perfectly innocent meaning. Now, of
>> course, its denotation has narrowed so drastically that it is impossible to
>> use the word in nonsexual contexts without eliciting counterproductive,
>> muffled guffaws.
>>
>> Just when the innocent era came to an end is not clear, but the benchmark in
>> my own memory is 1964 when mention of the Non-Intercourse Act of 1809 caused
>> such wordless mirth in my co-ed high-school American History class that Mr.
>> Callahan had to tell us to get serious, that's what they called it.
>>
>> And yet, also in 1964, the novelist and critic George P. Elliott was
>> publishing the following sentence in which he attempted to characterize the
>> novel as a genre :
>>
>> "The content of the [ideal] novel as here defined is intercourse among a few
>> credible characters and between them and the reader, who knows them by their
>> public actions, their intimate words, and their unrecognized impulses."
>>
>> Elliott was born around 1920. Could the shift have occurred so late in his
>> life that he didn't realize the umhilarity in what he was writing ? Or was
>> his mind clouded by his doctorate in literature ?
>>
>> When did "intercourse" get funny ?
>>
>> JL
>
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