Q: soixante neuf (UNCLASSIFIED)

[Laurence Horn]

At 9:27 PM -0400 10/29/09, Benjamin Zimmer wrote:
>On Thu, Oct 29, 2009 at 6:11 PM, Mark Mandel <Mark.A.Mandel at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>  On the meaning, I would define it not as "simultaneous cunnilingus and
>>  fellatio", but as "simultaneous mutual oral sex". I remember hearing it with
>>  reference to male-male pairings as well. Google /"gay 69"/ claims "about
>>  58,200" hits; and /"lesbian 69"/ "about 128,000".
>
>Jesse's recent Slate piece on "Why it's so hard to put sex in the
>dictionary" addresses this very point. He cites an older edition of
>Random House College Dictionary defining "sixty-nine" as "simultaneous
>fellatio and cunnilingus by two partners" and notes that it "omits the
>possibility of a homosexual sixty-nine."
>
>http://www.slate.com/id/2227971/
>
I was going to suggest a definition along the lines of "simultaneous
gamahuching", but I see there's some dialect variation on this.  A
couple of entries for "gamahuche" (verb or noun) say something along
the lines of '(perform) oral sex, esp. cunnilingus (on)'.  An
interesting use of "esp." if nothing else.

LH

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