"oral sex" among the Victorians + postil(l)ion

[Laurence Horn]

>on 1/11/06 10:37 AM, Chris Waigl at cwaigl at FREE.FR wrote:
>
>>  ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>>  -----------------------
>>  Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>>  Poster:       Chris Waigl <cwaigl at FREE.FR>
>>  Organization: sadly lacking
>>  Subject:      Re: "oral sex" among the Victorians + postil(l)ion
>>
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>--> -
>>
>>  On Wed, 11 Jan 2006 10:09:46 +0000, neil typed:
>>
>>>  As soon as I posted, I realized I'd hit the 'b' instead of 'the 'n',
>>>  resulting in the acte veberien' instead of 'acte venerien'.
>>>
>>>  Didn't think it warranted another post to correct what I assumed
>>>  would be seen as an obvious typo!
>>
>>  I actually spent ten minutes with the dictionaries over the "acte
>>  vébérien" ("he can't have meant vénérien, doesn't that refer only to
>>  infections?").
>>
>>  Chris Waigl
>>  who didn't dare to ask
>
>The first definition in my SOED for 'venereal' gives:
>
>'Of or pertaining to, associated or connected with sexual desire or
>intercourse.'
>
>Infection only makes its appearance at definition 2. Possibly also the case
>in French dictionaries!
>
It's also worth noting that all erotic terms are flagged with
"[Venery]" in Farmer & Henley.  The narrowing by association with VD
only came post-Victorianly in English.  The nice thing about "venery"
is that it could also refer to terms specific to hunting; both
veneries come into Middle English from the same ultimate Latin source
along with "win", "venom", "venison", etc.  But there isn't a whole
lot of hunting slang in Farmer & Henley.

larry