"rattle" = have sexual intercourse with, 2001

[William Salmon]

> At 2/22/2011 02:55 PM, Laurence Horn wrote:
> >_ro(d)ger_ is in Farmer & Henley as both a substantive 'the penis' (<
> >1653, Urquhart's trans. of Rabelais) and a verb "to copulate' (< 1750)
>
> Of course it's the act I'm remembering, from my excursions in London
> accompanying William Byrd.  :-)
>
> Joel

I was thinking of William Byrd, too, from his Secret Diary, which was supposed to have been written in the early 1700s. It was written in an older shorthand form, and not translated till the 1940s. But at least in the "translation" there's lots of rogering going on. I wondered if the use of that particular word was the translator's choice or if it was clear from the shorthand that that's what Byrd meant.

WS

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