Archive for the ‘Latin’ Category

Annals of sexual slang: peacocks

April 1, 2020

News for penises, in Latin.

Mike Pope, posting on Facebook yesterday, this Duolingo example:

(#1)

Eyebrows were immediately raised.

(more…)

Posted in Language and animals, Latin, Phallicity, Taboo language and slurs | Leave a Comment »

Morning tum

March 3, 2020

(There will be penis allusions, but nothing actually raunchy.)

My morning names of 2/26, which arrived three in a bunch, all tum-words, all body-related, but in two different ways:

(a) noun tumor, a tissue growth

(b) adj. tumid, enlarged or distended (as applied to erect penises in particular, but to other things as well)

(c) adj. tumescent, ditto, but more strongly evoking penises

(a) has a somewhat medical tone, but has been taken into everyday usage. The other two are elevated in tone, distanced from carnality; they sound literary or technical. When I came fully to consciousness, I realized that all three traced back to the Latin tum– stem in tumere ‘to swell’. It’s all about swelling; (a) has gone in one direction of semantic specialization, (b) and (c) in another.

And then, of course, there turned out to be more, stuff I hadn’t anticipated at all: the nouns tumulus ‘ancient burial ground’ (they are mounds) and tumult ‘loud noise, disorder’ (the sound rises).

Where will it end? Is a tummy so called because the bellies of babies are often rounded and the bellies of pregnant women are distended? (No. So the antacid Tums is irrelevant to this story.) What about the bodyparts scrotum and rectum, or even the proper name Tatum, suggesting Channing Tatum and his impressive endowment? (No, a thousand times, no. And you should be ashamed of yourselves for having suggested it.)

(more…)

Posted in Connotation, Etymology, Gay porn, Language and food, Language and medicine, Language and the body, Language in advertising, Latin, Metaphor, Morning names, Style and register | Leave a Comment »

Fried eggs and fairy wands

June 18, 2018

Also blazing stars, gayfeathers, and wandflowers. All plants, colorfully named. Providing a little exercise in taxonomic names vs. common names.

The fried eggs come from Elizabeth Daingerfield Zwicky, who posted this on her Facebook page yesterday:


(#1) EDZ: “Portrait mode makes fried egg flowers even more absurd” (by erasing the flower stem, so that the flower appears to be floating in the air)

The fairy wands I came across at Palo Alto’s Gamble Gardens this morning:


(#2) Angel’s (fishing) rods, wand flowers, or fairy wands

(more…)

Posted in Language and plants, Latin, Metaphor, Names, Taxonomic vs. common, Technical and ordinary language | Leave a Comment »

Capitulum in corpore magno

August 1, 2017

(Men’s underwear and bodies, taking off from a recent Daily Jocks ad for the Marcuse company. With a caption of mine. Somewhat racy, but not crude. And there will be cartoons.)

(#1)

Capitulum in corpore magno

A hard man —
An erection lasting more than four hours –
But fair —
Requires immediate medical attention –
A pinhead with
Broad shoulders

(more…)

Posted in Gender and sexuality, Language and the body, Latin, Linguistics in the comics | 1 Comment »