Who's diddling and how?

[Jesse Sheidlower]

On Mon, Jul 14, 2008 at 10:12:07AM -0400, Laurence Horn wrote:
> At 7:41 AM -0400 7/14/08, Charles Doyle wrote:
> >I can well remember a time--in my callow late youth, in a way more
> >benighted time--when it sounded odd to me (even downright
> >ungrammatical) if I heard "She fucked him" instead of the more
> >normal (perhaps divinely ordained) "He fucked her."
>
> At least two much cited papers made that claim, complete with asterisk on
> *Jane fucked John:

I don't have it handy, but I believe that the definition of
_fuck_ in the _Penguin English Dictionary_ of 1965--the first
post-18th-century general dictionary including an entry for
the word--specifically defined the word as something a man
does to a woman.

Jesse Sheidlower
OED

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