Q: soixante neuf

[Joel S. Berson]

I'm still waiting for someone -- anyone! -- to address my questions,
which are about dating (before 1888).

At 10/29/2009 09:06 PM, Laurence Horn wrote:
>Agreed on both.  I was going to post on Joel's unwarranted
>heterosexist restriction below

It's the OED2's (i.e., 1989) unwarranted restriction.  I thought
everyone would recognize the quotation, and carelessly did not cite my source.

Ben Zimmer wrote:
>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 note that Jesse did not cite an older edition of the OED, and trust
that he is in the very process of amending the OED.

Joel

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