when "intercourse" got funny

[Charles Doyle]

Wasn't the mid-1960s about the time when we started hearing the riddle (belonging to the genre that was being discussed on this list a few months ago), "What's a 4-letter word ending with '-k' that means 'intercourse'?"?  The wit of the riddle depends on the word's having as its primary (or at least its first-thought-of) meaning "copulation" but also on the awareness of "talk" as a possible meaning.

--Charlie
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---- Original message ----
>Date: Wed, 27 Sep 2006 05:30:46 -0700
>From: Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at YAHOO.COM>
>Subject: when "intercourse" got funny
>To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
>
>Some months ago it was observed that there was a time when the word "intercourse" could be used with a perfectly innocent meaning. Now, of course, its denotation has narrowed so drastically that it is impossible to use the word in nonsexual contexts without eliciting counterproductive, muffled guffaws.
>
>  Just when the innocent era came to an end is not clear, but the benchmark in my own memory is 1964 when mention of the Non-Intercourse Act of 1809 caused such wordless mirth in my co-ed high-school American History class that Mr. Callahan had to tell us to get serious, that's what they called it.
>
>  And yet, also in 1964, the novelist and critic George P. Elliott was publishing the following sentence in which he attempted to characterize the novel as a genre :
>
>  "The content of the [ideal] novel as here defined is intercourse among a few credible characters and between them and the reader, who knows them by their public actions, their intimate words, and their unrecognized impulses."
>
>  Elliott was born around 1920. Could the shift have occurred so late in his life that he didn't realize the umhilarity in what he was writing ?  Or was his mind clouded by his doctorate in literature ?
>
>  When did "intercourse" get funny ?
>
>  JL

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