articles on euphemisms for sex

Laurence Horn laurence.horn at YALE.EDU
Tue Feb 1 04:16:33 UTC 2005


At 8:11 PM -0800 1/31/05, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
>One suspects that the term "frottist" has been popularized because
>"frotteur" and "frotteuse" are gender-specific and too hard to spell.
>
>JL

Mebbe so, but one doesn't want to predict the popularization of "massist".

L

>Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU> wrote:
>---------------------- Information from the mail header
>-----------------------
>Sender: American Dialect Society
>Poster: Laurence Horn
>Subject: Re: articles on euphemisms for sex
>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>At 4:13 PM -0800 1/31/05, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
>>Didn't Germaine Greer start the discusion in 1970 in "The Female Eunuch" ?
>>
>>As for "frottist," it's not in the OED (got that, Jesse?) but its
>>august pages do contain the synonymous "frotteur," and will tell you
>>all you might wish to know on the subject.
>>
>>JL
>
>In French, of course, those who do so and are of the female
>persuasion are "frotteuses" rather than "frotteurs", but this
>distinction tends not to be retained in English (to judge from both
>my intuition and google). "Masseuse" gets regularized in the
>opposite direction; I've noticed many a reference to a "male
>masseuse". Markedness strikes again!



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