"Brain" as Slang for "Oral Sex": fun with metonymy

[Laurence Horn]

At 4:16 PM -0800 11/5/04, Arnold M. Zwicky wrote:
>On Nov 5, 2004, at 9:16 AM, davemarc provided a "brain" website.
>
>interesting development, suitable for energizing undergraduate classes
>on semantics, language use, and language change.

Good idea.  I'll try it out this week; we're just up to semantic
change, taboo avoidance, and such.

>
>the development seems to be entirely in the expressions "get/give
>brain", which cover exactly the territory of "get/give head".  the
>motivation for the development is surely concealment, but otherwise
>it's just metonymy, with the brain part used to refer to the head whole
>(well, strictly speaking, to the referent of "head" in the expressions
>denoting oral sex).  not unlike, say, the development of the modern
>russian word for 'head' from a (presumably) slang use of a word for
>'skull' (borrowed from latin "calvus").

cf. also Fr. tête 'head' < Late Latin testa 'skull' < Classical Latin
testa 'shell' (metaphor followed by metonymy)

>
>in fact, "get/give head" is a metonymy too, since what you receive from
>or provide to your partner in oral sex is not really the whole head,
>but just the mouth, in particular the lips and tongue.

Well, I suppose we do have to allow for variant practices...

larry