"Cock"

[Jonathan Lighter]

I don't see how we could know.

But isn't the assertion that it has a truly unisex denotation (as was
suggested a while back) still merely speculative?  Except, perhaps, in the
minds of some poststructuralists, the real-life distinction between male and
female physiology seems incontrovertible.

I've never met or heard of anybody who used the word that way, which, from
the point of view of the known history of English sexual terms, would, I
believe, be unprecedented. (I'm not counting intentionally vague euphemisms
with inclusive standard meanings like "thing" and "business.")

Anyone using the word in a unisex manner today may realistically be
suspected of tendentiousness. A hundred years from now, who knows?


JL

On Tue, Aug 16, 2011 at 10:05 AM, Baker, John <JMB at stradley.com> wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "Baker, John" <JMB at STRADLEY.COM>
> Subject:      Re: "Cock"
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>        Do we know if "cock" here means the vulva or vagina, as opposed
> to masculine or feminine genitalia generally?
>
>
> John Baker
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf
> Of Jonathan Lighter
> Sent: Monday, August 15, 2011 9:50 PM
> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> Subject: Re: "Cock"
>
> Here is an  unquestionable English ex., from a centuries-old bawdy song
> sung
> in 1978 by Danny Brazil, a Traveller in Gloucestershire. Brazil seems to
> have been born around 1910. He is described as "illiterate." He learned
> many
> songs from his father:
>
> "She run downstairs for to piddle in the pot.
> Up jumped the little crabfish and caught her by the cock."
>
> http://www.mustrad.org.uk/articles/brazils.htm#fam
>
> I've seen dozens of variant texts of this song, dating back to Bishop
> Percy's ms.,  but this is the only one that has this rhyme. Presumably
> the
> couplet originated in the nineteenth century.
>
> JL
>
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