"Fuddle", meaning sexual congress

[Mark Mandel]

Reminiscent of "futter".

m a m

On 9/28/07, George Thompson <george.thompson at nyu.edu> wrote:
>
> I spent a few minutes browsing a new book on sexual behavior in
> Philadelphia during the early republic; it proves definitively that there
> was sexual behavior there, back then, and some of it naughty.  I was hoping
> that the author would quote from court records, depositions, and the like,
> and I would find some nice antedatings for dirty words.  In fact, she quotes
> mostly print sources.  There are a few passages from an anonymous and
> undated diary held by the American Philosophical Society -- the author
> supposes it is from the mid-1790s.  These give an unrecorded meaning of
> "fuddle", which the OED, Cassell's & HDAS have only in the sense of
> drunkenness.
>
> "my flame being up I thrust her vigorously and she opened with a scream --
> a real joyful fuddle  (entry dated January 7)
> "I rolled her over and fuddled her"  (entry dated December)
>
> The book is: Clare A. Lyons, Sex among the Rabble. . . .  Chapel Hill: U.
> North Carolina Pr, 2006.  The quotations appear on p. 251 & 252.
>
> GAT
>
> George A. Thompson
> Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern
> Univ. Pr., 1998, but nothing much lately.
>
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