when "intercourse" got funny

[Charles Doyle]

Still, it's IRONIC that literal, "scientifically" precise terms can function as euphemisms!

--Charlie
____________________________________________

---- Original message ----
>Date: Wed, 27 Sep 2006 09:55:37 -0700
>From: Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at YAHOO.COM>
>Subject: Re: when "intercourse" got funny
>To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
>
>
>Presumably the word could function as both dignifier and euphemism, more or less as it does today.
>
>  JL
>
>
>Charles Doyle <cdoyle at UGA.EDU> wrote:
>  ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
>Sender: American Dialect Society
>Poster: Charles Doyle
>Subject: Re: when "intercourse" got funny
>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>Or did users of the "medical" terms hope to shield the unlearned (includidng the young) from the earthy realities that they signify--sort of the way English translations of Greek texts used to lapse into Latin for the bawdy passages?
>
>--Charlie
>____________________________________________
>
>---- Original message ----
>>Date: Wed, 27 Sep 2006 08:53:43 -0700
>>From: "Arnold M. Zwicky"
>>Subject: Re: when "intercourse" got funny
>>To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
>>
>>
>>the movement of sexual terms from scholarly/medical/legal use to general polite use seems to have been widespread in the late 19th/early 20th century: "masturbation", "penis", "testicles", "vagina", and a number of others seemed to have made the move. is this a sign of a greater willingness to talk about sexual topics in polite company?
>>
>>arnold (zwicky at csli.stanford.edu)

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org