schlorgers and s(c)hlongers

[Jan Ivarsson TransEdit]

Ernest Bornemann, Sex im Volksmund. Der obszöne Wortschatz der Deutschen (Rowohlt, 1974) has "Schlange", "Schlauch" as well as "Schlot" as names for the penis. But he does not give dates for his words.
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----- Original Message -----
From: "Douglas G. Wilson" <douglas at NB.NET>
Sent: Saturday, March 24, 2001 10:05 AM
Subject: Re: schlorgers and s(c)hlongers


> Following Messrs. Landau and Horn:
>
> >>Note the adjective "big" in "big schlorgers".  The writer would use "big"
> >>to describe the size of the men's sex organs rather than the size of the men.
>
> I agree, tentatively. (In principle, one might suppose that many of the men
> must actually have been rather ordinary in size, in both senses ....)
> However, one must be cautious in judging what was "natural" usage,
> regarding a single example at the distance of 140 years.
>
> >>By analogy with "trouser serpent" = "penis", the derivation German
> >>"Schlange" = "snake" is plausible.
>
> Yes, it's plausible. It's plausible that there may have been a word
> "schlonger" in German/English ca. 1860, too. It's also plausible that there
> may have been a specific transcription error. It's even plausible that all
> of these suppositions are true ... but is it "virtually certain"? I don't
> find it so.
>
> Here's another "plausible" hypothesis. Perhaps the original German word was
> "Schläger" (more or less = "striker"), maybe written "schlaeger" by the PA
> soldier, mistranscribed "schlorger" (depending on the handwriting, I think
> maybe about as likely as "on" > "or"). This has the advantage that the
> German word is known to have really existed (unlike "Schlonger" AFAIK).
> "Schläger" = "[baseball, cricket] bat", among other things, a fine
> sex-organ metaphor, and also = "ruffian" or so, so it could go either way.
>
> All this is conjecture in a vacuum, of course. If I had to bet, I suppose
> I'd prefer "schlorger" = "penis" over "schlorger" = "soldier", but not by
> much. And I'm still in the dark as to what word this really is. Maybe Lowry
> or some other scholar has seen a comparable word several times, and can be
> more certain of its spelling and meaning.
>
> Relatively old direct English cognates of "Schlange" have the usual
> spelling "slang" (no "sch-") (from Dutch, I guess), meaning (1) cannon,
> from 16th Century, (2) strip of land [speculative etymology], from 17th
> Century, (3) chain [cant], from 19th Century, (4) strip of water, from 19th
> Century.
>
> The modern Dutch cognate, "slang", means (1) tube or hose, (2) snake, (3)
> bad woman, as I understand it.
>
> Yiddish-derived English "sh-"/"sch-" words for "penis" include "shmuck",
> "shlong", and "shvantz" (various spellings). All of these appear in
> standard German ("Schmuck", "Schlange", "Schwanz", resp. = "jewel",
> "snake", "tail"). Is ANY of these known to have had an English-language
> version meaning "penis" at the time of the Civil War? Or even before ca.
> 1900? [But ... I note that only "shlong" seems to correspond to a standard
> Dutch word. However, the spelling "sch-" would point to High German rather
> than Dutch; but I don't know much about Low German orthography in Civil War
> times.]
>
> -- Doug Wilson
>