[Ads-l] Antedating of "blow job"

[Laurence Horn]

Actually, it should be acknowledged here that the entry for "blow", v. tr.
in HDAS (noted upthread, with citations back to 1930) provides the gloss
"to fellate or (much less freq.) to perform cunnilingus upon".  The only
cite Jon provides for the latter use, following unsurprisingly many for the
former, is from a 1977 letter of John Cheever's. But it's there, and it's a
transitive verb. I'm guessing "suck" might have similar sex-neutral
applications. But in neither case do we attest the true referential freedom
manifest in the (alas, defunct) verb "gamahuche".

LH


On Fri, Jul 29, 2022 at 9:08 PM Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu>
wrote:

> well, a transitive verb phrase, not a verb
>
> On Fri, Jul 29, 2022 at 9:04 PM Mark Mandel <markamandel at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> English, too, has a gender-neutral verb for oral sex: "give head".
>>
>> MAM
>>
>> On Fri, Jul 29, 2022, 2:58 PM Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu>
>> wrote:
>>
>> > Speaking of wind instruments...
>> >
>> > French may be among relatively few languages that sport a transitive
>> verb
>> > underspecified for the meaning 'perform oral sex on', where the object
>> can
>> > denote a female or male individual. Standard glosses are exemplified by
>> > those in the OED, "To practise fellatio or cunnilingus on or with (a
>> > person)" for the verb and "An act of fellatio or cunnilingus" for the
>> > derived nominalization. The origin is unknown (barring a fanciful
>> > derivation), but there are two curiosities about Farmer & Henley's cite:
>> > (1) the main entry is given as _gamaruche_, although _gamahuche_ is
>> given
>> > as a variant (orthographically speaking)
>> > (2) it cross-references "to bag-pipe"--this is where the wind instrument
>> > comes into play, but checking F&H's entry for that verb, we are told
>> only
>> > that it's
>> >
>> > "A lascivious practice; too indecent to mention"
>> >
>> > Curious, since the practice (or practices) in question ("to irrumate",
>> "to
>> > cunnilinge") is mentioned under the _gamaruche_ entry, not to mention
>> the
>> > degree of indecentness mentioned elsewhere by F&H.  Also the
>> non-definition
>> > is given for a noun form but it's the verb that's being left undefined.
>> > It's as if they were too busy fanning their faces at the indecorous
>> item to
>> > even notice the discrepancy.
>> >
>> > Seriously, though, I wonder if there's independent evidence that F&H
>> grew
>> > bolder with their glosses as they moved from Vol. I (1890) (hosting "to
>> > bag-pipe") to Vol. III (1893) (hosting "gama{r/h}uche") and beyond.
>> >
>> > LH
>> >
>> >
>> >
>>
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>>
>

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