Antedating of "Suck"

[Mark Mandel]

The "reported fact" as posted in this thread was "b - e" -- lowercase "b",
space, hyphen, space, lowercase "e". That was all I had to go on, and it's
what I used.

Fortunately, gmail waits 30 days before emptying the trash, so I've been
able to retrieve Fred's post of June 27, free of >'s and ='s (though not of
a "!" + linebreak + space in "sometime", near the end):


================



A website at www.londonlives.org
 has a very interesting searchable corpus of manuscripts and printed
materials relating to "Crime, Poverty, and Social Policy in the Metropolis"
between 1690 and 1800.  Here is a citation for the verb "suck" in its sexual
sense, much before the 1928 first use in the Oxford English Dictionary (but
note 1891 citation in OED s.v. _cocksucker_):


1772 _Old Bailey Proceedings_ 9 Sept. (www.londonlives.org

)   John Gray < no role > . Crook was brought to our watch-house, in
Swan-yard, on Monday morning, by Dennis; Crook said that on the 3d of
September he left off work in the evening, about seven o'clock; went to the
Red Lion in Moorfields, to drink a pint of beer; that just as he had drunk
the beer, Gibson came in and sat down by him; that Gibson asked him to drink
with him; that when he called for another pint, he asked him if he knew Dick
that had lived there; said he, he had a fine - fit to do Mrs. - ; he said
after that, he went out at the door to make water, and Gibson followed him,
and said, what sort of a c - k have you got? Dick was just such another slim
young man as you; let me teel it; which he did; he said it was not so big as
his; that then he took him down to the vault, forced him down on the seat,
onbuttoned his breeches, then worked him till he made it come, and then
sucked it; that he worked it again s!
 ometime; that then he pressed him very close, called him his dear, hugged
him and squeezed him and sat down, put his hand behind him, and put it into
his b - e, and worked up and down till he hurt him vastly, and he believed
made him bleed.


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m a m

On Fri, Jul 2, 2010 at 8:51 AM, <ronbutters at aol.com> wrote:

> So we just ignore the reported fact that the abbreviation was "b.e." Or was
> it "b--e"?
> ------Original Message------
> From: Joel S. Berson
> Sender: ADS-L
> To: ADS-L
> ReplyTo: ADS-L
> Subject: Re: [ADS-L] Antedating of "Suck"
> Sent: Jul 2, 2010 8:49 AM
>
> At 7/1/2010 07:34 PM, Mark Mandel wrote:
> >"Bunghole" and "bumhole" are both good candidates for this 1772
> >usage. From OED:
> >
> >...
> >
> >bum-hole:
> >slang (chiefly Brit.).
> >ARSEHOLE n. (in various senses). In early use: spec. the anus; =
> >ARSEHOLE n. 1.
> >1611 J. FLORIO Queen Anna's New World of Words at Trullo, A trill or
> bum-hole.
> >1665 J. PHILLIPS tr. P. Scarron Typhon i. 5 Ran as swift from Pole to
> >Pole, As if h'd had at his bum-hole The God of Fire.
>
> IIRC I've seen "bumhole" in 18th-c. writing.  (The OED has only one
> quotation for this oft-slighted century, 1713.)
>
> Joel
>

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