deal

[Ben Zimmer]

On Tue, Jun 7, 2011 at 6:55 AM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
>
> Letterman last night said that Weinergate shows you should "never twitter
> photos of your deal."

In my On Language column on genital "junk" in January, I quoted Arnold
Zwicky and Tom Dalzell on the useful vagueness of "junk" and such
related euphemisms as "down there," "unit," "thing," and "stuff":

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/02/magazine/02FOB-onlanguage-t.html

Lettermanian "deal" fits well into that category. More from Arnold here:

http://arnoldzwicky.wordpress.com/2011/01/01/genital-junk/

(I still consider getting the "junk" column past the NYT copy desk
something of personal triumph. Interestingly enough, I didn't receive
a single complaint about the explicit quote from Ethan Mordden's gay
erotica, but many readers took me to task for not exploring "junk in
the trunk" -- see Arnold's post for more on that.)

--bgz

--
Ben Zimmer
http://benzimmer.com/

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