[Ads-l] "turn (someone) on"

[Ben Zimmer]

For the transitive phrasal verb "turn on," OED3 has sense 3.a.i, "To excite
or stimulate the interest or enthusiasm of (a person), esp. sexually,"
first giving an isolated example from Henry James in 1903. The modern usage
starts with a cite from 1963, and the OED notes that it's an extension of
sense 3.a.ii, "To get (a person) under the influence of a drug," from the
'50s. (GDoS starts with a different 1963 cite.) Here are a few notable
pre-1963 examples for the sense of "stimulate sexually," though the first
one is a bit ambiguous.

---
Robert Creeley, "A Wicker Basket" (poem)
_The Black Mountain Review_, Summer 1955, p. 191
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/42842/a-wicker-basket
https://danowski.digitalscholarship.emory.edu/nnap/journals/black-mountain-review/84/
Out the door, the street like a night,
any night, and no one in sight,
but then, well, there she is,
old friend Liz--
And she opens the door of her cadillac,
I step in back,
and we're gone.
She turns me on--
---
Norman Mailer, _Deer Park_ (play)
_The Realist_, Dec. 1960, p. 11 (excerpt, later published in 1967)
https://www.ep.tc/realist/pdf/the-realist-022.pdf
Elena: You know about love.
Marion: I know about sex, baby. I feel that for a hundred men and women.
Elena: And a dog or two.
Marion: Yes, and a dog or two. And you got the dog in you, baby -- let's
give Eitel that, he turned you on. He turned you on, and he'll leave you.
You have no future with Eitel.
---
The Beach Boys, "The Shift" (lyrics by Brian Wilson & Mike Love)
_Surfin' Safari_, 1962
https://genius.com/The-beach-boys-the-shift-lyrics
You may think a dress can't do very much
(Wearing a shift really turns me on)
With the slit up the side, you can't resist that touch
(Wearing a shift really turns me on)
---

--bgz

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