Arnold Zwicky's Blog

Today’s Pearls Before Swine:

Bet you didn’t know there was a Comic Strip Censor.

But since there is, Jef the Cyclist has to watch out for the ambiguity of package (which has come up on this blog many times).

I know, I know, hard work and good nutrition can do wonders for your pecs and abs, but it doesn’t make much difference to your package.

According to Green’s Dictionary of Slang, package in the genital sense goes back at least to 1972 and packet in this sense to 1958 (in a letter of John Gielgud’s).

[Addendum: And Green has basket in this sense back to 1941.]

This entry was posted on August 2, 2013 at 2:43 pm and is filed under Ambiguity, Gender and sexuality, Linguistics in the comics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.