when "intercourse" got funny

[Jonathan Lighter]

That's right. But as I remember it, the "talk" solution was more often (i.e., maybe from three out of the four teens I observed, the fourth being me) was greeted with puzzlement and skepticism.  So the joke must be rather older.

  JL
Charles Doyle <cdoyle at UGA.EDU> wrote:
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Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: Charles Doyle
Subject: Re: when "intercourse" got funny
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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
____________________________________________________

---- Original message ----
>Date: Wed, 27 Sep 2006 05:30:46 -0700
>From: Jonathan Lighter
>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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