bodily

[Jonathan Lighter]

True enough, but the semantic naughtiness is more in the"want"  than in the
pronoun. I'm a little surprised that OED doesn't include this sexual nuance
anywhere under def. 5.

The fact that Uncle Sam's former "I want you!" isn't usually a giggle
bonanza is, I'd say, because most normal people have compartmentalized the
sexual and non-sexual senses of "want."

Cf. the semantic qualities of to "have."

JL



On Thu, Feb 24, 2011 at 3:43 PM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu>wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: bodily
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> At 3:29 PM -0500 2/24/11, victor steinbok wrote:
> >My point wasn't that it is ambiguous. When you hear "I want your
> >body", I doubt you would misunderstand that as "I need a subject for a
> >pathology lab". Surely, /taken as a whole/, the meaning is
> >unambiguously sexual. But it does not mean that there is a mini-George
> >Michael in your head, singing "I want your sex!" in translation, when
> >you hear it. [I can see Sinatra in this this place, but George
> >Michael? NEVER!] In this context, "body" just means "body" and does
> >not translate--alone--as "sex". Why would it be different for "bodily"
> >in the verse? Of course, it's about sex! Who's going to dispute that?
> >But it misses the whole point--see the "rattle" discussion for similar
> >points.
>
> Agreed.
>
> >
> >Not to put too fine a point on it, but when someone says, "I want
> >you!", they usually (but not always) imply "sexually". But it does not
> >mean that "you" means "sex".
>
> Especially when it was Uncle Sam that was doing the wanting.
> Although arguably then the subtext was "I want to fuck you up."
>
> LH
>
> >  You have to take the whole chunk
> >idiomatically. But the way you're interpreting it, it would have to be
> >you==F.U.C.K. I just don't see it...
> >
>
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