Archive for the ‘Metaphor’ Category
June 5, 2026
(dripping with raunchy sexual content, entirely unsuitable for kids and the sexually modest)
Not what TSE had in mind, but peach-eating was the topic for some bros in a Facebook reel that came by me this morning. Another chapter in the great book of schemes for talking about analingus without sounding really gross. (And the topic comes up because a great many people find the act deeply pleasant to receive, and a fair number of us find it satisfying to perform, for the sense of bodily intimacy it affords, as a display of insertive dominance (for its own sake or as foreplay to fucking someone), as a offering of submissive service (for its own sake or as foreplay to getting fucked), or for some amorphous swirl of such feelings.
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Posted in Argument structure, Emoji, Language and the body, Language of sex, Metaphor, Poetry, Puns, Signs and symbols, Syntax, Taboo language and slurs | Leave a Comment »
June 3, 2026
On Facebook on 5/28, Bert Vaux reported on responses to a query of his on curtains vs. drapes. On that posting, an incidental comment by Heidi Harley:
Did anyone [among BV’s respondents] mention that you can’t threaten anyone with the utterance, It’s drapes for you! But you can with curtains!
Eliciting a series of responses from me:
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Posted in Argument structure, Complementation, Furnishings and tools, Gender and sexuality, Idioms, Language and the body, Metaphor, Plays, Sociolinguistics, Style and register, Syntax | 2 Comments »
May 25, 2026
(a dip into the rhetorical organization of texts and into figurative language, but getting its raw material from gay porn and so it’s going to be entirely unsuitable for kids and the sexually modest)
In the opening of Raging Stallion’s 2024 porn flick Tourist Attractions (scenes from the stream of visitors to Beau Butler’s (fantasy) rental house in Barcelona), BB explains the pleasures of the city:
I like to take in everything Barcelona has to offer: art, culture, food, cock — you know, the basics.
Thus launching this seaside D&A S&F circus with a stroke of comic bathos. From the high level of art and culture, dropping to the artful and cultivated satisfaction of an animal need and then plunging to what we think of as raw vulgar pleasure.
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Posted in Allusion, Bathos, Figurative language, Gay porn, Jokes, Language and the body, Language of sex, Metaphor, Poetry, Pop culture, Porn actors | Leave a Comment »
May 19, 2026
Whoa: toxic, resilience, Rizzler — all cry out to Zippy as he makes his critical way along a forest path, deprecating — despite their (respective) colorfulness, exactness, and freshness — the way these expressions are overused:
In the Zippy strip of 5/17, the forest is alive with the sound of lexical lamentation — with 14 such sounds, to be specific
For each of them, you might feel that you’re legitimately complaining that you’ve been hearing the expression often in recent times, though this impression is obviously going to depend a lot on who you hang out with (Rizzler has a minuscule role in my life. and my bad not much of one; consequently, I find them notable, but not because they seem to be used too much).
Now, people choose — mostly tacitly, not through conscious planning — to use certain expressions for reasons; people choose them because they have some function in the speakers’ and writers’ lives. The usual critique of overuse amounts to the claim that people are making their choices entirely on the basis of stylishness, choosing certain expressions merely because they are fashionable, stylish, with-it, what (they believe to be) the cool people are saying; and that this is reprehensible, because people are making choices just to show off that they’re in whatever counts as the in crowd for them and not on the basis of some more abstract goodness of fit of expressions for conveying particular meanings.
But talking this way just puts things back onto the question of where these styles come from. There’s room there for a certain amount of historical accident, but there are also reasons why certain expressions might get some social traction, through their values or virtues. Specifically, the values of colorfulness, exactness, and freshness. I will ilustrate all three from Zippy’s 14.
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Posted in Figurative language, Hyperbole, Lexical semantics, Metaphor, Pragmatics, Sociolinguistics, Usage advice, Usage attitudes, Variation | 4 Comments »
April 30, 2026
(plenty of references to a wide rage of sexual practices, mostly between men (though not in street language), so dubious for kids and not for the sexually modest)
A e-mail ad today for a new t-shirt from the Peachy Kings shop: the SIR mesh football jersey ($40), with this pitch:
Yes SIR… we’ve got the top for you! Our new SIR mesh jersey will let everyone know who’s the boss! This top will get you all the attention this summer with its slinky sleeves, peek-a-boo mesh and slight-crop.
SIR now joins PK’s existing t-shirt labels GOOD BOY, PORN STAR, STUD, and TRASH, but with a sociolinguistic twist: sir is primarily an address term; unlike the count nouns boy, star, and stud, and the mass noun trash, it has virtually no uses as a referential common noun. In man-on-man sex, it’s used by a subordinate addressing a superordinate: a bottom to his top, a Boy to his Daddy, a sub(missive) to a dom(inant), a (sexual) slave to his master. I am Sir is used in bdsm contexts, but I am a sir ‘I am a top / Daddy / dom / master’ is decidedly odd.
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Posted in Address terms, Clothing, Context, Emoji, Figurative language, Language and the body, Language in advertising, Language of sex, Lexical semantics, Metaphor, Pragmatics, Signs and symbols, Slang | Leave a Comment »
April 28, 2026
(about a family of vulgar slang expressions, so streams of raunchy talk about sex: totally not for kids or the sexually modest)
With apologies to the Rodgers and Hammerstein of Carousel, notes on to bust a nut ‘to ejaculate, orgasm’ and its kin, among them the verbs bust, nut, dick, and ball (plus all those bodypart nouns).
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Posted in AAVE / Black English, Conversion, Dialects, Language and the body, Language of sex, Metaphor, Nouning, Variation, Verbing | Leave a Comment »
April 23, 2026
This is a complicated background to a mishearing posting that has itself turned out to be more complex than I first imagined — a mishearing of the title word in the song “Cardinal” as recorded in 2024 by Kacey Musgraves. This posting is about the song; the titular bird, the northern cardinal; KM the singer-songwriter; KM’s wonderful performance of the song; and the song’s moving background story, inspired by the late country / folk singer John Prine. (more…)
Posted in Categorization and Labeling, Figurative language, Folk beliefs, Language and animals, Language and music, Metaphor, Music, Pop culture, Signs and symbols | Leave a Comment »
April 22, 2026
(lots of man-on-man sex, described in street language, so entirely unsuitable for kids and the sexually modest)
In yesterday’s (4/21) “Prodigious macrophallicity, contemptuous noblesse” on the g4p porn actor who performs under the name Malik Delgaty: a very big man with a really big dick and a frequently disdainful attitude towards the men who service that dick. In his first videos, his line readings were wooden, and he showed little interest in his partners as people. Over the years 2020 to 2023 he got better at his craft, but he continued to treat his sexual partners primarily as devoted receptacles for his monumental organ — with what I called contemptuous noblesse.
Such an attitude is a hazard for g4p men, but not an inevitable one. I bring you, for contrast, the g4p porn actor Chris Rockway. Seen in this thumbnail photo:
(#1) CR. with a characteristic (somewhat knowing) smile; compare the photos of MD in yesterday’s posting: either neutral or intense, bordering on the disdainful
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Posted in Figurative language, Gay porn, Homosexuality, Language and the body, Language of sex, Metaphor | Leave a Comment »
December 4, 2025
(deeply not for kids or the sexually modest: it’s all about man-on-man sexual acts, though the really hard-core stuff will come in a later posting; this one is mostly about lexicography, but even so, there’s a lot of guys pronging guys going on)
In this morning’s crop of gay porn ads, in a TitanMen store mailer, the charmingly titled (and apparently single-entendre) Joey’s Surf Vacation, with a dvd cover featuring a porn actor new to me, the boyish twink Joey Mills (paired with a familiar muscle twink, Dean Young, in a scene I’ll write about in a later posting). The cover of the 2024 dvd from MEN.com:
Troy Daniels and Joey Mills (from a different scene in the dvd)
On to the lexicography, starting with various attested verbs, while working towards what would seem to be a fresh metaphorical verb surf.
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Posted in Figurative language, Gay porn, Gender and sexuality, Language and society, Language of sex, Lexicography, Metaphor | 3 Comments »
October 29, 2025
The background, from FactCheck.org (a project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center), “Meme Doctors Quote From Well-Known Satirist” by Angelo Fichera on 12/12/19:
[satirical columnist Andy] Borowitz … in a post to his verified Facebook page in 2016:
Stopping T**mp is a short-term solution. The long-term solution, and it will be more difficult, is fixing the educational system that has created so many people ignorant enough to vote for T**mp.
This was quoted (in a punctuational variant) on Facebook today, with ensuing commentary (edited some here):
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Posted in Education, Language and politics, Metaphor, Morality, Slogans | Leave a Comment »
