"Moby sex"?

ADSGarson O'Toole adsgarsonotoole at GMAIL.COM
Mon Oct 28 19:58:05 UTC 2013


JL wrote:
>> The rarely consulted HDAS II offers exx. of _moby_ 'huge' going
>> back to the Moby Grape days of the '60s.
>>
>> Am not sure, though, that "moby sex" means "big sex." Astonishing sex
>> perhaps?

LH wrote:
> Or sex with a whale (astonishing in its own way, if you're not a whale).

This is a common term in my subculture of carnality for erotic play
involving harpoons in which there is a single survivor who is left
clinging to a coffin . . .  symbolically speaking; cf. La petite mort.


>> On Mon, Oct 28, 2013 at 2:34 PM, Dan Goodman <dsgood at iphouse.com> wrote:
>>
>>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>>> -----------------------
>>> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>>> Poster:       Dan Goodman <dsgood at IPHOUSE.COM>
>>> Subject:      Re: "Moby sex"?
>>>
>>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>
>>> On 10/27/2013 07:32 PM, Baker, John wrote:
>>>>
>>>> From the Jargon File, http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/M/moby.html,
>>>> definitions 1 and 5 of "moby" appear relevant:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> moby: /moh bee/ [MIT: seems to have been in use among model railroad
>>>> fans years ago. Derived from Melville's Moby Dick (some say from
>>>> ‘Moby Pickle’). Now common.]
>>>>
>>>> 1. adj. Large, immense, complex, impressive. “A Saturn V rocket is a
>>>> truly moby frob.” “Some MIT undergrads pulled off a moby hack at the
>>>> Harvard-Yale game.” (See Appendix A for discussion.)
>>>>
>>>> . . . .
>>>>
>>>> 5. The largest available unit of something which is available in
>>>> discrete increments. Thus, ordering a “moby Coke” at the local
>>>> fast-food joint is not just a request for a large Coke, it's an
>>>> explicit request for the largest size they sell.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Surprisingly, not in Urban Dictionary, which suggests that this
>>>> meaning has largely passed out of use.
>>>
>>> Much thanks!
>>>
>>> --
>>> Dan Goodman
>>> Whatever you wish for me, may you have twice as much.
>>> http://dsgoodman.blogspot.com
>>>
>>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>>> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> "If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."
>>
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>
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> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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