"rattle" = have sexual intercourse with, 2001

[Ben Zimmer]

On Tue, Feb 22, 2011 at 2:31 PM, Joel S. Berson <Berson at att.net> wrote:
>
>At 2/22/2011 01:06 PM, Neal Whitman wrote:
>>
>>>The 2001 movie "The Banger Sisters" regularly uses the verb "rattle"
>>>= "have sexual intercourse with" (although not often does it use this
>>>euphemism) and the corresponding noun "rattle".
>>>
>>>Not in the OED,  nor Wentworth & Flexner (1967) or Chapman (1995),
>>>the only slang books on my shelf.
>>
>>It shows up in George Macdonald Fraser's "Flashman" novels quite a bit,
>
> Found (probably with the desired meaning!) at least in "Flash for
> Freedom!" (1972), e.g. page 453 in an Everyman's Library collection
> (2010).  Seemingly not in "Flashman" (1969).

Green's Dictionary of Slang has it from 1966, in Trimble's _5000 Adult
Sex Words and Phrases_. GDoS also includes a bracketed quote from
1661, from a bawdy poem about the rattling of buttocks:

http://books.google.com/books?id=vCpLAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA82

--bgz

--
Ben Zimmer
http://benzimmer.com/

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