SPUD acroetymythology (1927)

[Benjamin Zimmer]

On Fri, 9 Sep 2005 12:19:25 -0500, Mullins, Bill
<Bill.Mullins at US.ARMY.MIL> wrote:

>The phrase itself ("for unlawful carnal knowledege"), taken literally,
>and without seeming to imply the F-word (as seen in the cites above)
>seems to come from the British Empire.  Hein Online's first literal
>cites for it come from The South African Law Journal (1929), The
>Melbourne University Law Review (1961 - 1962).  The first literal US
>cite Hein has is from the Tulane Law Review (1967 1968), and then the
>Tennessee Law Review (1970 - 1971).

"Unlawful carnal knowledge" (without the "for") goes back much earlier
than that. The phrase was used in definitions of rape under English Common
Law [1] and can be found in Britain's Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1885
(retained in N. Ireland's current statute on sex offenders [2]) as well as
nineteenth-century statutes in the southern US [3].

--Ben Zimmer

[1]
http://www.interactivetheatre.org/resc/history.html
[2]
http://www.hmso.gov.uk/si/si1994/Uksi_19942795_en_4.htm
[3]
http://web.archive.org/www2.h-net.msu.edu/~child/conference/bardaglio.htm