Q: soixante neuf

[victor steinbok]

Slightly off-topic, but I was intrigued by the other term in this
volume, specifically /tete-beche/. This seems to be also a
contemporaneous philatelic term, appearing quite regularly in the
1890s volumes reproduced by Google. The two earlier references I found
were 1876 The Philatelist (vol X) and 1874 The Stamp-Collector's
Magazine, Illustrated (vol XII).
The respective sexual term falls under 1886, The perfumed garden of
the Cheikh Nefzaoui: a manual of Arabian erotology, By ʻUmar ibn
Muḥammad (al-Nafzāwī)

>> The name usually employed, ras ou kaa, literally signifying head to bottom, can be rendered in French as "tete-beche".

One caveat--in this case, the reference is not quite the same, as this
text is from a footnote relating to the text describing quite a
different pose (basically, both partners looking at each other's
"posterior" during intercourse, no tongue involved).

Similarly, a 1903 cookbook (Fish, Volume 1, By S. Beaty-Pownall)
refers to the packing of mullets "tete-beche" or "heads to tails".

>> The mullets should be packed in /tete-beche/, /i.e./, heads to tails.
(Italics in original; diacritics differ somewhat from other sources)

The dual description suggests the terminology to be both standard and
somewhat less than common (in cooking jargon, at least). On the other
hand, Fr/En dictionaries of the period define the phrase as "head
against foot" without further elaboration (the same definition can be
found in dictionaries dated from 1887, 1881 and 1868). I would imagine
the French references should go much further back, but, if the goal is
to find the expression in live English text (as opposed to being
translated in a French-English dictionary), these dates don't matter
much.

I am traveling and lack hard-copy references (or OED online) even by
meager standards, so I have no idea if there is a corresponding OED
entry with the full assortment of definitions. The philatelic
description is very robust--the term describes a single pane of stamps
with one or more images rotated relative to the rest. Sometimes this
is by design--the entire pane consists of alternating images,
chess-board style, but, for the period, more often than not, the
reversal was accidental. There is even a "semi-tete-beche" that refers
to an image that is only partially rotated (pretty much necessitating
square stamps, in this case). The term was clearly in English usage
and not merely an ad hoc borrowing. Similarly, the 1903 reference
describing a method of packing fish for baking is robust. As for the
"erotic" use, both the originally cited 1896 reference and the 1886
one above use translation as the backdrop, so, even though the
expression clearly appears in an English-language text, it seems to be
little more than a reference to French use and does not signify
language practice in English.

VS-)

On Thu, Oct 29, 2009 at 9:49 PM, Garson O'Toole
<adsgarsonotoole at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> 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".

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