Q: Pupil of the eye as the most expansive male organ

Laurence Horn laurence.horn at YALE.EDU
Fri Jun 23 15:21:44 UTC 2006


>I heard a form of this riddle in N.Y.C about 1964. I believe it was,
>"What part of a man's body expands to X times its size when he sees
>a pretty girl ?  His eyes."

Ah, but there's a frame in the version I remember, which includes its
own epi-punchline.  The biology teacher, trying to capture the
attention of her distracted class, asks "Which part of the human
anatomy expands 10 times when it is aroused?"  One female student,
clearly disgusted, stands up and begins to storm out of the room.
The teacher says calmly, "Miss Davis, you need to know two things.
First, you clearly didn't read the assignment; the answer is the
pupil of the eye.  Second, I fear that you are in store for
considerable disappointment in marriage."

LH

>"Joel S. Berson" <Berson at ATT.NET> wrote:
>   ---------------------- Information from the mail header
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>Sender: American Dialect Society
>Poster: "Joel S. Berson"
>Subject: Q: Pupil of the eye as the most expansive male organ
>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>There is the riddle "What part of the male anatomy expands the most
>between its smallest and its largest size?" (meaning
>percentage-wise: largest size divided by smallest). The answer I
>heard was the pupil of the eye. [Yes I know the female anatomy has
>pupils also, but saying "male" is of course designed to point
>responders in a different direction.]
>
>Someone elsewhere tells me "it's in the screenplay of _Kinsey_ where
>Liam Neeson plays it with a twinkle". But I think I heard this long
>before this movie. Can anyone cite an earlier source?
>
>Joel
>
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