Q: soixante neuf

[Wilson Gray]

Garson O'Toole notes that:

The book [Vocabula amatoia] provides some evidence that
the sexual terms "soixante-neuf" and "sixty-nine" were not widely
known to English speakers in 1896.


FWIW, IME, the sexual terms cited were not widely known to
Black-English speakers in 2006. The first time that I ever heard the
term, _soixante-neuf_, in the relevant sense, ca.1953, it was
translated by the speaker as "sixty-new"! Of course, this
mis-translation rendered the phrase somewhat less than transparent,
but much that has to with what Archie Bunker referred to as "that
there" was once normally less than transparent, cf., e.g. _tribadism_,
once quite popular in academically-oriented um-literature, the only
kind that was legally available in this country, if you lived in N.Y.
or S.F. and knew how to work the shelves at Barnes & Noble.

-Wilson

On Thu, Oct 29, 2009 at 10:49 PM, Garson O'Toole
<adsgarsonotoole at gmail.com> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender: Â  Â  Â  American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster: Â  Â  Â  Garson O'Toole <adsgarsonotoole at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject: Â  Â  Â Re: Q: soixante neuf
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> On Thu, Oct 29, 2009 at 10:29 PM, Joel S. Berson <Berson at att.net> wrote:
>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
>> Sender: Â  Â  Â  American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> Poster: Â  Â  Â  "Joel S. Berson" <Berson at ATT.NET>
>> Subject: Â  Â  Â Re: Q: soixante neuf
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> 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. Â I was going to post on Joel's unwarranted
>>>heterosexist restriction below
>>
>> It's the OED2's (i.e., 1989) unwarranted restriction. Â I thought
>> everyone would recognize the quotation, and carelessly did not cite my source.
>
> I have not been able to improve the 1888 OED cite, but the following
> information might prove useful to someone. The term "soixante-neuf"
> appears in a book of vocabulary entitled "Vocabula Amatoria" in 1896.
> The English language definition of the term does not mention the
> direct translation "sixty-nine". The book provides some evidence that
> the sexual terms "soixante-neuf" and "sixty-nine" were not widely
> known to English speakers in 1896.
>
> FAIRE SOIXANTE-NEUF = a posture in venery, in which the woman is
> gamahuched by the man, he being tongued by his partner. Also FAIRE
> TĘTE BĘCHE.
>
> Citation: Vocabula Amatoria: A French-English Glossary of Words,
> Phrases and Allusions Occurring in the Works of Rabelais, Voltaire,
> Moliere, Rousseau, Beranger, Zola, and Others with English Equivalents
> and Synonyms", London, Privately Printed for Subscribers Only, 1896.
>
> http://books.google.com/books?id=bQnUAAAAMAAJ&q=Soixante-neuf#v=snippet&q=Soixante-neuf&f=false
>
> Note, the definition given in the book makes an assumption about the
> participants, male-female, that is similar to the one discussed above.
> The book gives French language examples for "soixante-neuf" in works
> labeled "Parnasse Satyrique" and "Chanson anonyme modern".
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>



--
-Wilson
–––
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"––a strange complaint to
come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
–Mark Twain

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org