"Cock"

Tue Aug 16 16:19:58 UTC 2011

Well, gee, LIMB means both 'arm' and 'leg'--and TIT is used (at least informally) to refer to both male and female anatomy, so why not COCK? Not to mention that ASS means the hindquarters region for both male and female, as well as meaning (metonymically?) female genitalia.

According to the first citation in DARE, COCK in Indiana in the 1890s applied to both male and female genitalia. And the final citation, from American Speech 1970, says the both-sex reference is found in Missouri. Neither seems particularly "postmodern." Of course the reporters could be wrong, but I doubt that politics has much to do with what southern folk called their genitals in the earlier 20th century. Of course, that doesn't mean somebody can't find an excuse to make a little sociopolitical rant, even so.

One ancecdote, told to me by a bisexual male student (from the rural SC-NC border) c1970: "I said to my roommate, 'I need some cock bad'. He didn't know I thought about doing gay stuff, and I just assumed he knew I meant 'pussy'. But he unzipped his pants and I was ready for that, too." This is as close as I can come to any confirmation that COCK actually meant simply 'genitalia' (or, by extension, interaction with genitalia), but it seemed to me that the student assumed that In understood him to understand that COCK in his dialect was not restricted to the male member.

On Aug 16, 2011, at 11:54 AM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:

> Larry, I meant we can't know about this particular example. But as
> acculturated native speakers of English we have a right to guess, and I
> think most all of us would guess the same.
> 
> "Genitalia" and "genitals" are apposite but different. As you say, they're
> technical terms, which means they're employed (if you'll pardon the
> expression) dispassionately, and quasi-euphemistically.
> 
> More to the point, I think: It's difficult for me to imagine any parent or
> similar natural language-source (who is a native speaker of English and is
> other than Humpty Dumpty) teaching an infant to use one word (any word) for
> both organs routinely and consistently as the proper designator of both.
> (Yeah, in some postmodern household somewhere it must be happening:  but
> will it catch on?)
> 
> JL
> 
> On Tue, Aug 16, 2011 at 11:42 AM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu>wrote:
> 
>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>> -----------------------
>> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> Poster:       Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
>> Subject:      Re: "Cock"
>> 
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> 
>> 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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>>>> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> --
>>> "If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the
>> truth."
>>> 
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>> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>> 
> 
> 
> 
> --
> "If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."
> 
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