query: a cock and cock story

[Douglas G. Wilson]

Laurence Horn wrote:
> ....
> I've been looking at the relationship between the
> two "cock"s in question ....
>
> Cites begin in the 19th c., with:
> 1867 Doten _Journals_ II 857 [In cipher.] We felt
> of each other's cocks...and then she got on and
> fucked me bully.
>
--

The writer is Alfred Doten. It is p. 957. The cipher is transparent. On
the same page is an instance of "get [one's] gun off" (shown under "gun"
in HDAS), applied to man and to woman here.

--
> ....
>
> (i) Are there dialects/speakers who freely use
> both "cock" lexemes?
--

Apparently Doten. Presumably others of his time. Maybe some now, I don't
know, but as I recall "cock" = "pussy" speakers of my acquaintance
(decades ago) eschewed "cock" = "penis", used "dick" (which I think was
much more common in my neighborhood back then anyway).

--
> (ii) Do we know the derivation of the female
> "cock"?
--

Hard to test, but my guess would be that it's just a generalization from
the male term. There was/is considerable 'taboo' involved, hence
reference to the "private parts" with ambiguous terms ("thing", "place",
"down there"). Maybe "cock" was treated as such a term, applicable to
man and woman. Sounds fair, I guess.

Note that Doten's "gun" surely would seem to be a masculine metaphor
also, but also freely applied (by him) to a woman.

--
> Is there any independent justification
> for the plausible-sounding suggestion in the HDAS
> entry that it is "perh. fr. obs. Eng. dial. COCK
> 'cockle, shell-fish'", and thus cognate with
> "conch" as well as of course "cockle"?  The
> etymology would sort of make sense, but I don't
> know if there's anything else to go on here,
> beyond an 1892 cite Jon draws our attention to
> that mentions "cockle" as "vulgar parlance" for
> the labia minora.
--

Seems unlikely a priori (to me).

-- Doug Wilson

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