[Ads-l] a joke, I think, and likely to be an old one

[George Thompson]

However, neither HDAS nor Jonathon Green's dictionary have "conjugate" =
"engage in sexual intercourse".

Neither does the OED, but that omission has to be blamed on Jimmy Murray,
since the basic entry was put together in 1891.

>From the NYTimes of a few days ago.  The speaker runs a hotel in Queens
where a pimp had been murdered by another pimp.  He's explaining that since
the murder, he's stopped letting out his rooms by the hour, and now
requires a three-hour stay, to bring in a more respectable sort of
clientele.

But Frank Rocco said he has worked to clear out the prostitution. He
eliminated the short-stay, hourly rates for about a year, which drove away
a lot of that business. He said he occasionally looks at backpage.com to
see if anyone is advertising from one of his rooms, and if so, he throws
that person out.

The short-stay rates are back, to make ends meet, Mr. Rocco said, but he
charges more than other motels to keep out the bad elements.

“It’s mostly for people cheating on their wives,” he said, spraying weed
killer in his lot. “People with no place else to conjugate.”
GAT
-- 
George A. Thompson
The Guy Who Still Looks Stuff Up in Books.
Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern
Univ. Pr., 1998..

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