cundrum

[Jonathan Lighter]

This nonstandard variant of "condom" didn't make it into HDAS 1 because it isn't slangy enough. Its absence from OED, however, prompts this post:

  1886 in _Southwestern Reporter_ I 251: He claims she yielded this objection on his telling her he could use an instrument for prevention called a "cundrum."

  1973 Kenneth Burke in William H. Rueckert, ed. _Letters from Kenneth Burke to William H. Rueckert_ (West Lafayette, Ind.: Parlor Press, 2003) 202: In intercourse sans cundrum.

  2004 Ben Gazzara _In the Moment_ (N.Y.: Carroll & Graf) 98 [ref. to ca1941]: He told me...that I should only use a "cundrum" called Ramses because they...didn't break. We didn't know how to pronounce "condom" in those days.

  JL


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