Antedating of "Oral Sex"

Wilson Gray hwgray at GMAIL.COM
Sun Jul 14 22:20:58 UTC 2013


On Tue, Jul 9, 2013 at 6:19 AM, W Brewer <brewerwa at gmail.com> wrote:

> <-linctus> (i.e. licked)


That requires the assumption that _linctus_ is necessarily the
2nd-Declension Perfect Passive Participle. I’ve always assumed that
_linctus_ “licking” was simply a 4th-Declension noun, like _apparatus_,
which is not the PPP of _apparare_, though it looks like it. That’s why the
traditional plural in English is _apparatus_ and not _apparati_. Hence, the
usually-though-not-necessarily-masculine _-us_ ending of that declension is
perfectly scrutable. The “dirty” part of the word is _cunni-_, in any case.
So, _cunni linctus_ “licking of [the] cunt” is hardly a euphemism.

-- 
-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

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