"lay pit and box together"

[Wilson Gray]

Whoa! I could have lived the rest of my life without that picture in my mind!

-Wilson

On 8/2/07, Joel S. Berson <Berson at att.net> wrote:
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "Joel S. Berson" <Berson at ATT.NET>
> Subject:      "lay pit and box together"
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> The phrase "lay pit and box together" is not in OED2.  Two meanings
> (see Grose, 1811; Google "Lay Pit Boxes together midwives"):
>
> 1)  In a theater, combine the two areas (Grose does not say this, but
> probably to increase revenue for a popular play);
>
> 2)  "an operation in midwifery or copulation, whereby the division
> between the anus and vagina is cut through, broken, and demolished".
>
> Probably enhanced by an association of "pit" with the anus and
> excretion (although I don't find this in OED2), and the sense of
> "box" as vulva or vagina (e.g., Chapman; from 1600).
>
> Joel
>
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All say, "How hard it is that we have to die"---a strange complaint to
come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
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                                              -Sam'l Clemens

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