when "intercourse" got funny

[Leslie Savan]

"Intercourse" got funny, Paul Fussell wrote in The Great War and Modern
Memory, in the wake of WWI, which brought about a loss of innocence and a
rise of irony:
      "Another index of the prevailing innocence [before the war] is a
curious prophylaxis of language. One could use with security words which a
few years later, after the war, would constitute obvious double entendres.
One could say intercourse, or erection, or ejaculation without any risk of
evoking a smile or a leer." (p.23)


----- Original Message -----
From: "Jonathan Lighter" <wuxxmupp2000 at YAHOO.COM>
To: <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
Sent: Wednesday, September 27, 2006 10:23 AM
Subject: Re: when "intercourse" got funny


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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at YAHOO.COM>
> Subject:      Re: when "intercourse" got funny
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>
> 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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> 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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