"Cock"

[Laurence Horn]

On Aug 16, 2011, at 11:28 AM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:

> I don't see how we could know.

In principle we could, if we had a reference to "their/our two cocks" in an unambiguously hetero context.
>
> 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.")

or technicalia like "genitals" or "genitalia" itself and euphemisms like "privates" or "pudenda" (the latter of which I assume started out unisex).


LH

>
> 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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>>
>
>
>
> --
> "If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."
>
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