when "intercourse" got funny

[Jonathan Lighter]

Presumably the word could function as both dignifier and euphemism, more or less as it does today.

  If anybody is wondering why Intercourse, PA, hasn't changed its name, Wikipedia tells us that it's now a popular tourist destination (being in Amish country helps) and that merry pranksters like to steal the village signposts.

  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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Or did users of the "medical" terms hope to shield the unlearned (includidng the young) from the earthy realities that they signify--sort of the way English translations of Greek texts used to lapse into Latin for the bawdy passages?

--Charlie
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---- Original message ----
>Date: Wed, 27 Sep 2006 08:53:43 -0700
>From: "Arnold M. Zwicky"
>Subject: Re: when "intercourse" got funny
>To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
>
>
>the movement of sexual terms from scholarly/medical/legal use to general polite use seems to have been widespread in the late 19th/early 20th century: "masturbation", "penis", "testicles", "vagina", and a number of others seemed to have made the move. is this a sign of a greater willingness to talk about sexual topics in polite company?
>
>arnold (zwicky at csli.stanford.edu)

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