Teabag (was RE: more on -er (UNCLASSIFIED))

[Benjamin Zimmer]

On Fri, Dec 4, 2009 at 12:22 AM, Garson O'Toole
<adsgarsonotoole at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Matt Gordon
>> I haven't been following this thread very carefully, so please forgive me if this has been
>> asked and answered. Was "teabag" as the name of a sex act widely known and used
>> before 5 or so years ago? I became familiar with the word through its use in online gaming
>> (some games allow a player to stand over a fallen enemy and squat down), and I'm wondering
>> what role video games might have played in spreading the term.
>
> The use of teabag in the sense indicated is more than five years old.
>
> Citation: The concise new Partridge dictionary of slang and
> unconventional English by Tom Dalzell, Terry Victor, Routledge, 2007.
>
> Teabag is given as a verb with 1998 as the date and U.S as the location.
>
> http://books.google.com/books?id=cCVnlIUTpg4C&q=teabag#v=snippet&q=teabag&f=false

1998 was when "teabagging" entered pop culture via the John Waters
movie "Pecker". Here's a clip:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gi9hgqZr6fs

And here's some discussion by Waters:

http://www.bostonphoenix.com/archive/movies/98/08/06/JOHN_WATERS.html

But references can be found on Usenet back to 1994 at least:

http://groups.google.com/group/alt.sex/msg/a20798bb3a6b8155
"Teabaggin'," alt.sex, Jan. 22 1994


--Ben Zimmer

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