Richard muses, "I wonder whether the total number of euphemisms for sexual intercourse is greater than that for drunkenness?"

In the spirit of inquiry, let us collect euphemisms for sexual intercourse (brain power only), arranged to make it easy to review and see whether an entry has already been presented.

By the way, a definitional question: is "sexual intercourse" limited to coitus, or does it include other forms of two-party (or more) activity or solo activity. (If the former, then it is itself a euphemism.) In any event, shall we include only coitus, or the others as well? Let's include all but use an asterisk to mark non-coital forms.

I feel a bit dicey about this thread, and so will begin with only a few to kick it off, leaving time for others to object if they feel this thread improper.

• A to G: bang, beast with two backs, crimimal conversation
• H to M: have, make it, make love, make whoopie
• N to R:
• S to Z: screw, 69*, sleep together

(10 so far)

I think it would be interesting to include other activities which lead up to and enhance coitus. To that end, I offer the following:

hump, *snog, *suck face, bump bush, filander

I feel a bit dicey about this thread,

Ahem! Well, you should!

I've always liked getting to first base, second base, third base...and scoring a homerun!

quote:

Originally posted by Kalleh:
I've always liked getting to first base, second base, third base...and scoring a homerun!

A real baseball fan, huh? I'm sure Shufitz is glad to hear that!

Tinman

ball
lay
plough
toss, tumble

black topping
coffee griding
doing it
doing the horizontal mambo
doing the nasty
having carnal knowledge
having a relationship with
jazz
jellyroll
jive
knowing (Biblical euphemism)
laying
lying with (Biblical euphemism)
bonk
practicing for the honeymoon (I think that's from some move or tv show)
riding (remember Easy Rider?)
rock 'n' roll (or just roll)
swinging
slow dancing

They're limitless.

Tinman

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Rutting, plowing the furrow, getting your rocks off, riding the rocket, playing the skin flute (oral), copulating, shagging, bouncing on the midnight trampoline.......

tinman mentions "doing it". As Cole Porter said,

And that's why birds do it, bees do it
Even educated fleas do it
Let's do it, let's fall in love .

Add canoodling.

I note with dismay the lack of british contributions here.

discussing Ugandan affairs

Every time I hear that marchin Lohengrin
I am always on the outside lookin' in
Maybe that is why I see the funny side
When I see somebody's brother take a bride
Weddings make a lot of people sad
But if you'd not the one, they're not so bad!

Another bride, another june
Another sunny honeymoon
Another season, another reason
For Makin' Whoopee!!!

A lot of shoes, a lot of rice
The groom is nervous, he answers twice
It's really killin', that he's so willin'
To Make Whoopee!!

Picture a little love-nest
Down where the roses cling
Picture the same sweet lovenest
Think what a year can bring

He's washing dishes, and baby clothes
He's so ambitious, he even sews
But don't forget, folks
That's what you get, folks
For Makin' Whoopee!!

Another year, or maybe less
What's this I hear? Well, can't you guess?
She feels neglected, and he's suspected
Of Makin' Whoopee!!

She sits alone, 'most every night
He doesn't phone nor even write
He says he's "busy"
But she says "is he?
He's Makin' Whoopee!!"

He doesn't make much money
Five-hundred thousand per
Some judge, who thinks he's funny
Says "You pay six to her"

He says: "Now judge, what if I fail."
The judge says: "Budge, right into jail!
You better keep her, I think it's cheaper
Than Makin' Whoopee!!"

How could we possibly forget good old venery? You folks DO remember venereal disease, don't you? That's what people contracted before the literalists decided they had Sexually Transmitted Diseases. And if you're lovesick, I suppose you've contracted an emotional venerial disease!

My ex-sister-in-law used to say she was going to be the main feature at a nuts and bolts seminar.

And "rolling in the hay."

Tinman

quote:

discussing Ugandan affairs

Now that one really perplexes me! I must say, though, that many of these are I haven't heard of, like "plough" (now, in the drunk thread, I have heard of being "ploughed!") or "jellyroll" or "jazz" or "doing the horizontal mambo" (though it makes sense) or "coffee grounding" or "black topping" or "rutting" or "playing the skin flute" or "bouncing on the midnight trampoline" or "bump bush," etc. Jeez, you all get around!

Shu asked me today if I knew where the "birds and bees" came from. I thought it would be easy to find, and I have been all over the Internet looking and can't find anything. I looked in word detective and world wide words and etymology online and Google. Any ideas?

fooling around
taking the skin boat to tuna town
having the sideways taco (oral) or the tuna taco
playing hide the salami
entertaining the anaconda

and - Mama's got a squeezebox, Daddy never sleeps at night.

Ummmm, don't forget, Caterwauler, "catting about' is one too!

Another US jazz-related one (which became the title of a jazz standard): "strutting with some barbecue".

quote:

Originally posted by Kalleh:
... many of these are I haven't heard of, like "plough" ...

Shakespeare's " Antony and Cleopatra" (1606): "He ploughed her, and she cropt." (line 943)

Movie version (1966)of Edward Albee's 1962 play, "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? ":

quote:

Nick: What I thought I'd do is, I'd sort of insinuate myself generally, you know, find all the weak spots...become sort of a fact and then turn into a, a what? (gesturing toward George)
George: An inevitability.
Nick: Exactly, an inevitability. Take over a few courses from the older men, plow a few pertinent wives.
George: Now that's it. I mean, you can shove aside all the older men you can find, but until you start plowing pertinent wives, you're really not working. That's the way to power. Plow 'em all!...The way to a man's heart, the wide inviting avenue to his job is through his wife, and don't you forget it.
Nick: And I'll bet your wife's got the widest, most inviting avenue on the whole damn campus. (He laughs) I mean, her father being president and all.
George: You bet your historical inevitability.
Nick: Yessiree. I'd just better get her off into the bushes right away.

quote:

Shu asked me today if I knew where the "birds and bees" came from.

Well, the birds came from eggs, and the bees ...

The Straight Dope:

quote:

Where exactly "the birds and the bees" originated nobody knows, but word sleuths William and Mary Morris hint that it may have been inspired by words like these from the poet Samuel Coleridge: "All nature seems at work ... The bees are stirring--birds are on the wing ... and I the while, the sole unbusy thing, not honey make, nor pair, nor build, nor sing." Making honey, pairing ... yes, we can definitely tell what Sam had on his mind.

The Morrises offer the theory that schools in years past taught about sex by "telling how birds do it and how bees do it and trusting that the youngsters would get the message by indirection." Right. Luckily for the perpetuation of the species, there's always been Louie in the schoolyard to explain how things really worked.

Hmm, "... nor sing." Reminds me of "yodeling up the canyon."

Tinman

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I'm working from memory here but I think in Titus Andronicus when they are plotting the brutal rape and disfigurment of Lavinia the phrase they use is

"revel in Lavinia's treasury."

Do none of you watch Black Adder?

Sausage Time!

Rumpy Bumpy!

quote:

Originally posted by BobHale:
"revel in Lavinia's treasury."

Summary of Titus Andronicus.

Entire play.

What a gruesome story!

Tinman

Tinman, thanks for those explanations. I didn't remember that "plough" was used for sexual intercourse in Shakespeare. I am more skeptical about the "birds and bees" theory, but I would like to get those word sleuths, William and Mary Morris, for our board!

quote:

Originally posted by Kalleh:
Tinman, thanks for those explanations. I didn't remember that "plough" was used for sexual intercourse in Shakespeare.

Hugh Rawson, in Dictionary of Euphemisms and Other Doubletalk," (1995) remarks on Shakespeare's use of the word, but he spells it plow. That made me wonder which came first plough or plow and why one changed into the other. The OED Online says that, in the 16th and 17th centuries, the noun was usually plough and the verb was usually plow, but that plough was sometimes used for the verb and, in the 18th century, the two forms merged into plough for both noun and verb in England. In the U.S. they became plow. He says that meaning dates back "at least to Roman times and still current: the similar mow appears to be obsolete."

By the way, intercourse is, itself, a euphemism. as Rawson points out. He also mentions a couple I had never heard of: ugly and yentz.

Let me quote what he says about ugly

quote:

Ugliness, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder, "ugly" being an old term (ca. 1900), apparently of Southern origin, for sexual intercourse, often in the phrase do the ugly. "He was in [jail in Mississippi] for thirty days for throwing bricks at a woman at a church social because she wouldn't do the ugly for forty cents" (Atlantic Monthly, 9/38). Variants, current among college-age people in a New York City suburb and, presumably, among younger and older people elsewhere, include busting (or rubbing) uglies and to beat (someone) with an ugly stick (personal communication, 8/15/90). A synonymous expression, used in the same surburban set is doing the nasty (said by my informant to reflect a Roman Catholic upbring). The connection can't be documented but "ugly/nasty" look very much like spinoffs from doing the naughty, which dates from the 1800s as a reference to sexual intercourse. In turn, "naughty" (from "naught," a zero, something with no value), has a long sexual history, implying smuttiness or obscenity as far back as the sixteenth century. Variations on this theme included naughty-man, a whoremonger; naughty-pack a whore, and naughty-house a whorehouse, e.g. "This house, if it not be a bawd's house ... is a naughty house" (William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure, 1604).

Yentz, he says is "A low word in Yiddish, comparable to "fuck," in the sense of swindling or deceiving as well as copulating ..."

He also mentions play the virginals, a musical image used by Shakespeare and John Fletcher in The Two Noble Kinsmen.

quote:

I am more skeptical about the "birds and bees" theory, but I would like to get those word sleuths, William and Mary Morris, for our board!

I'm afraid William Morris, editor-in-chief of the American Heritage Dictionary in 1963 (I think it was published in 1969) died in 1984. I don't know if his wife, Mary Morris, is still alive or not. But his son, Evan Morris, is alive and well and is perhaps better known as The Word Detective.

Tinman

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