Basket weaving, pouring the pork, doing it đ
The history of slang and how difficult times impacts it
Hey horny readers! Weâre living in difficult times and younger generations are having less sex than ever (according to reports). What can we learn about difficult times by looking at the history of slang?
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Adult Sex Ed comedically challenges why we think what we think about sex. In case youâre new, Iâm Dani Faith Leonard, a comedy writer, film producer, and performer. In 2018, I started a comedy show called Adult Sex Ed and launched this newsletter last year. Each week, I take a fun deep dive into a topic that Iâve been researching. Want to know more? Read the whole description on substack here.
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At least once per week, Iâll stumble upon an article or think-piece about Gen Z and how incredible unsexy they are. They are anti-porn, against sex scenes in films, and theyâre not fucking. Nearly 40% of young adults surveyed in California in 2021 had no sexual partners in the prior year. Sure, some of that can be blamed on Covid and thereâs no doubt weâre living through difficult times. So, which came firstâthe lack of horniness or the feelings of hopelessness?
Last year, I posed a question in the newsletter: Can we learn about the evolution of cultural attitudes about gender, bodies and sex by exploring the history of slang? To find out, I did a deep dive on the history of euphemisms for the vagina in May, and euphemisms for masturbation in July. In September, I wrote about slang for promiscuity and this past January, I wrote about slang for pregnant women and their bodies. All of these posts are linked below. So, what about slang for sex? What can learn about how people pull through difficult times by the way that euphemisms have popped up?
I spent a couple of hours last night perusing Greenâs Dictionary of Slang, the largest historical dictionary of English slang written by Jonathon Green. The most striking thing about the euphemisms for sex was that they really havenât evolved much at all!
People started to âfuckâ in 1508 and âthread the needleâ in 1573. In the 1600s, people were âbasket weaving,â âhumping,â and âjoining giblets.â Sure, a few euphemisms sound like theyâre stuck firmly in colonial times, like âplaying fast and loose with a womanâs apron stringsâ and âgive oneâs arse a salad,â which apparently referred to having intercourse in the open air, and not the salad that you were probably thinking of. Iâm really not sure that I would ever want to âdo a plaster of warm guts,â but thatâs something that the people of the 1600s wanted to do, too.
Sex in the early 1700s sounded fun and grand. Folks liked to âwhip it,â âput the Pope into Rome,â âshoot London Bridge,â and âride a dragon upon St. George.â In the mid 1700s, people liked to âget a sliceâ and âplay at Adam and Eve,â but who would want to fuck like those two clueless fools, amiright?
Then, something peculiar happens. In 1776, âbe in a womanâs beefâ marks the last slang term until 1783, the exact years of the American Revolutionary War. Itâs not that people donât have sex during wartimeâbut apparently, they stopped talking about it. Or at least, they stopped inventing really funny sayings about it.
Cut to 1785. For the rest of that century, people were back to âtaking a turn in cock alley,â âshagging,â and âdoing the business.â For the next few years, there are plenty of new euphemismsâthat is, right up until the War of 1812. The inventive sexy talk completely disappears again.
The rest of the 1800s and beginning of the 1900s brought more euphemisms that people will feel pretty familiar with today, like âskin the cat,â âpop it in,â get some,âand âhorizontal refreshment.â Sex was a âflash in the panâ until World War I started. From 1914-1918, there were no new entries into Greenâs Dictionary of Slang. Thereâs also a pronounced drop-off during World War II.
Iâm not saying that people didnât have sex during wars, whether they were in battle or at home. Itâs well documented that over 300,000 United States servicemen got STIs during World War I alone! But maybe it felt a little more uncouth than usual to talk about it. Maybe people were a little less inventive, even if they werenât any less horny. But, after each of these wars, there was a big uptick in euphemisms too!
So, perhaps thereâs hope for sexless Gen Z. Maybe theyâre just a few years away from inventing their own versions of âpile-drivingâ and âhiding the salami.â I sincerely hope so.
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Bush Barbie on YouTube lists many euphemisms for condoms.
https://youtu.be/SG5TahspDoQ?si=Hp8cG_pWyr5fKqvJ