BE slang for _clitoris_

Wilson Gray hwgray at GMAIL.COM
Sun Jan 6 09:33:15 UTC 2013


Back in the day, I posted about my having asked a couple of friends,
ca. 1963, whether they knew of a slang term for _clitoris_. He said,
"purr tongue." She said, "pearl tongue." Neother infornant was
hesitant and neither found it strange that I didn't already know the
word, nor did either ask me whether I knew a different word. Too bad.
A discussion might have led to some random historical or etymological
insight. Since I, unfortunately, was asking only out of the merest
idle curiosity, that was the end of my "research," beyond concluding
that these words were variants and yjay there was no way to discover
the original word. If I hadn't happened, on a whim, to ask, I would
never have become aware of the existence of the words at all. I've yet
ti hear them used in the wild, since, on the *very*rare occasions that
I've heard the organ referred to among the bruz and cuz in the wild,
"clitteriss" was the only word used. And only now has it occurred to
me that these slang words may even be, themselves. variants of some
third word.

IAC, both variants can now be found in Google, with the earliest
example that my casual search found being from only 1967.

--
-Wilson
-----
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"---a strange complaint
to come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-Mark Twain

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org



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