when "intercourse" got funny

[Jonathan Lighter]

Wikipedia relates that Intercourse, PA, didn't receive its current name till 1814.

  For decades before that, it was "Cross Keys."

  So, if Wiki is correct, "intercourse"  still must have been very unfunny in 1814.  At least to villagers in rural Pennsylvania.

  People's minds have been provably in the gutter at least since Aristophanes (fl. 410 B.C.).  The present investigation seeks to discover when they dragged "intercourse" down with them.

  JL

Seán Fitzpatrick <grendel.jjf at VERIZON.NET> wrote:
  ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: =?iso-8859-1?Q?Se=E1n_Fitzpatrick?=
Subject: Re: when "intercourse" got funny
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Back in the '70s a friend who grew up in rural Pennsylvania near
Pennsylvania-Dutch country told me the joke about being able to drive
through Intercourse on the way to Paradise. I pulled out my one bit of PA
geographical knowledge to add that if one took a wrong turn he would end up
in Blue Ball. I think the joke was rather old at the time.

A few years earlier I wrote in the specs for a custom museum exhibit stand
that it would include "a flat base plate with a centrally placed erect
member". The review committee sent me their kudos. I didn't hear the
"---k" = "intercourse" joke till much later, but people's minds were
definitely in the gutter in the '70s.

Seán Fitzpatrick
No oil for pacifists!
http://www.logomachon.blogspot.com/

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