when "intercourse" got funny

Fri Sep 29 14:40:33 UTC 2006

Dear JL,
My use of 'luminary' was intended ironically and I apologize for not
signalling that sufficiently. Christie's works were staple fodder for the
penny-library circuit (not to mention the Boots and Moodie's lending
libraries which were thriving up until at least the '50s in Great Britain)
so her use of this word for 'blurt'- vocalizing that again while writing, I
can't help but wonder why *that's* never been 'double-entendred' -  was
obviously considered acceptable by a wide-ranging readership and by its
Protector (this was, after all, pre-Lady Chatterly). Oddly enough, she had
only one of her range of characters regularly ejaculating and that was
Tommy, of the Tommy and Tuppence detective duo. The last story featuring the
couple came out, I think, in the late 50s, but was set in the immediate
post-WWII period, so that would seem to skew the time-line proposed by
Leslie Savan and that I originally concurred with.
M.I.Amorelli
EAP, Faculty of Economics,
Sassari,
Italy

----- Original Message -----
From: "Jonathan Lighter" <wuxxmupp2000 at YAHOO.COM>
To: <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
Sent: Thursday, September 28, 2006 3:42 PM
Subject: Re: when "intercourse" got funny

> ---------------------- Information from the mail
> header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at YAHOO.COM>
> Subject:      Re: when "intercourse" got funny
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Very much so. Its dynamics must closely resemble those I posited for
> "intercourse."
>
>  Christie (1890-1976) was hardly an exclusively "highbrow" writer - and
> evidently unaffected by the presumed semantic shift of World War I.
>
>  My absolutely unscientific impression is that nonsexual "ejaculate" did
> not become truly unusable until the sex-manual fad of ca1970, but I could
> well be wrong.
>
>  JL
>
> Amorelli <mariam11 at VIRGILIO.IT> wrote:
>  ---------------------- Information from the mail
> header -----------------------
> Sender: American Dialect Society
> Poster: Amorelli
> Subject: Re: when "intercourse" got funny
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> This would seem to be in line with the liberal use of 'ejaculate', by
> luminaries such as Agatha Christie, with the meaning of 'blurt'.
> M.I.Amorelli
> EAP, Faculty of Economics,
> Sassari,
> Italy
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Leslie Savan"
> To:
> Sent: Wednesday, September 27, 2006 4:40 PM
> Subject: Re: when "intercourse" got funny
>
>
>> ---------------------- Information from the mail
>> header -----------------------
>> Sender: American Dialect Society
>> Poster: Leslie Savan
>> Subject: Re: when "intercourse" got funny
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> "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"
>> To:
>> Sent: Wednesday, September 27, 2006 10:23 AM
>> Subject: Re: when "intercourse" got funny
>>
>>
>>> ---------------------- Information from the mail
>> header -----------------------
>>> Sender: American Dialect Society
>>> Poster: Jonathan Lighter
>>> Subject: Re: when "intercourse" got funny
>>> --------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> -----
>>>
>>> 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 wrote:
>>> ---------------------- Information from the mail
>> header -----------------------
>>> Sender: American Dialect Society
>>> Poster: Charles Doyle
>>> Subject: Re: when "intercourse" got funny
>>> --------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> -----
>>>
>>> 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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