Archive for the ‘Taboo language and slurs’ Category
July 26, 2025
(all about the F-word and its uses, so obviously not for kids or the sexually modest)
Another posting that’s been hanging around for months. I argue that the OED treatment of the semantics of the sexual verb fuck is unsatisfactory, not compatible with the actual usage of English speakers for a long time now — apparently because earlier lexicographers, embracing normative views of sexual behavior, posited a single sense of sexual fuck, centrally denoting an agentive act of penis-in-vagina intercourse but with a large penumbra of vagueness, embracing many other sorts of sexual encounters. Then this inadequate treatment was adopted without comment or critique in Jesse Sheidlower’s The F Word. So that essentially all the authoritative literature on sexual fuck gets things wrong. I will explain; there will be no pictures.
(more…)
Posted in Ambiguity, Gender and sexuality, Language and the body, Language of sex, Lexicography, Participant roles, Semantics, Taboo language and slurs, Vagueness | 2 Comments »
June 17, 2025
(Consider the title; totally not for kids or the sexually modest)
Yesterday, on a closed group for lgbt+ folk and their friends:
— MP relayed a posting from Gloryview Ranch, “Embrace biblical Manhood”
— SC: Yeehaw! “Biblical manhood”. Wtf is that?
— EH > SC: Seems to have a lot to do with horses and bacon. Just like in the Bible, where Jesus broke bacon with his disciples.
— AZ > EH, breaking into raunchy verse, “The Cowboy’s Plea”:
Oh! Sweet buddy broke my bacon,
Made me sizzle with his fork;
I keep my bacon hot and greasy,
Pray he’ll give me more fresh pork!
I note that “The Cowboy’s Plea” contains no taboo / vulgar lexical items, but manages to be deeply raunchy by referring indirectly to sexual or excretory bodyparts and to sexual acts, all through the miracle of metaphor (some of it lexicalized, some of it fresh, but mostly — as with the nouns fork and pork ‘penis’ and the verbs fork and pork ‘fuck’ — skittering between the two).
The central metaphor, in break someone’s bacon ‘pop / bust someone’s cherry, break someone in sexually, have sex with someone who is a virgin’, is a fresh one; it achieves some degree of offensiveness through echoes of breaking Communion bread and the friendly sharing of meals. Meanwhile the central metaphor incorporates the freshly metaphorical bacon ‘fuckhole (vagina or anus)’, elaborated on in greasy, alluding to lubes as aids in fucking.
(more…)
Posted in Gender and sexuality, Language and religion, Language and the body, Language of sex, Metaphor, Poetry, Style and register, Taboo language and slurs | 2 Comments »
June 13, 2025
Among Tuesday’s crowd of events (it’s now Friday, and life has been stressful and unpleasant, but I’m trying to produce at least one pleasant thing): a visit to Palo Alto’s Gamble Garden, taken there by Sharon Gray of Bay Area Geriatric Care Managers. Too much in bloom or getting ready to bloom (or harvest, in the case of food plants) for me to post on more than a little bit. I’ve picked out two plants I admired but didn’t know. One is still a mystery (there was a label, but it clearly applied to a plant that had already bloomed and gone dormant, not to this ornamental grass with pretty bell-shaped purple-blue flowers), but the other had a label that applied to it (and not to some other plant in its neighborhood), so I can tell you that it’s an especially vigorous Sisyrinchium striatum — the creamy-white blue-eyed grass of my title.
There will be photos, including one of me sitting in the garden; this one will require a fashion digression, on the tank top I’m wearing in the photo, a recent acquisition for summer wear.
(more…)
Posted in Clothing, Labels Are Not Definitions, Language and plants, My life, Names, Semantics of compounds, Taboo language and slurs | 2 Comments »
May 9, 2025
(This posting is mostly about sexual acts, mostly discussed in street language, so it’s entirely inappropriate for kids and the sexually modest; I know, I know, that sucks)
Yesterday’s posting “Bill, it is the scribbling of a gigantic scoundrel” was about the wonderful absurdity of a Benjamin Schwartz New Yorker cartoon exploiting the Desert Island meme, with everything turning on the message in the sand of the tiny island Bill and his companion share with their ratty palm tree — who could possibly have left it there? —
Of three principal senses of suck, this was intended to be suck-C, an intransitive slang verb of denigration; the ingestion verb, suck-A, is irrelevant to the context; finally, the sexual verb, suck-B, was probably not on BS’s mind (though young men on a small island might turn to fellatio for sexual pleasure), but was certainly on mine
I have written extensively on this blog on these senses of suck, their uses, and their sociocultural contexts — compact summary coming soon — because in my gay male world (one of a number of worlds I inhabit), sucking cock is, simply, everyday sex, and consequently the verb suck has been elaborated and played on in that world, and all of that is of interest to me as a linguist (linguistics being another of the worlds I live in).
But I thought to steer clear of the gay stuff yesterday, so as not to distract readers from the intricate delights of the cartoon (which still makes me laugh every time I look at it). But I have a friend who is named Bill, who is gay, and who was moved to comment (on this blog) on yesterday’s cartoon:
I guess I DO suck, or at least would like to.
So then Bill sucks ‘Bill sucks dick’ was on the table. And we’re off for a holiday in Blow Job City.
(more…)
Posted in Ambiguity, Language and the body, Language of sex, Lexical semantics, Linguistics in the comics, Taboo language and slurs | Leave a Comment »
April 16, 2025
A follow-up to yesterday’s posting “One of these things is not like the others”, in which my (now AI-enhanced) Google search for
“African American linguists”
produced a display of 9 people (plus a further display of 4 others) which was instantly remarkable because the person in the position of pre-eminence in the first display, Walt Wolfram, was not (unlike all the others) African American / Black, but notably German American / white. WW is an amazing, prolific scholar of African American English and its uses and of African American communities, and he is a champion of those communities, certainly deserving of huzzahs and celebratory parades and official recognitions with laurel wreaths and gold-embossed certificates and all that stuff, but he’s unquestionably white — as, in fact, the photo accompanying his name in that display makes clear. (I’ll add that he doesn’t “talk Black” either. His everyday variety of English is working-class white Philadelphia, tenaciously maintained throughout years of formal education; it’s one of his badges of identity.)
(more…)
Posted in AI, Linguists, My life, Names, Race and ethnicity, Taboo language and slurs | Leave a Comment »
January 31, 2025
(dirty verse — a raunchy burlesque of some scurrilous doggerel — so not for kids or the sexually modest)
This is what I wrote to cease my weeping at a moment this morning when a number of MSNBC commenters, who were variously black, Jewish, female, and queer, struggled not to break down in hurt, anger, and despair in reporting on Anaranjado Grabpussy’s apparently declaring a ban on federal celebrations of DEI occasions (Black History Month, Pride, etc.). Further inspired by someone ranting, I don’t know why, on Facebook about Dildo as if it were the name of a person, a character in some social drama.
(more…)
Posted in Latin, My life, Parody, Poetic form, Quotations, Taboo language and slurs | 4 Comments »
January 29, 2025
elegantized insult: a replacement for an insulting word or phrase that’s notably more elegant than the replaced item, by using material from either the specialized or technical Greco-Latin stratum of English vocabulary or its very formal registers, for the purpose of humor, either pointed mockery (amplifying the insult) or droll playfulness (entertaining the audience).
Two examples conveying ‘without courage’. An example of the first type (and conveying mockery) came to me a few days ago in e-mail: anorchídic as a replacement for the insult ball-less. Then an example of the second type (and conveying jocularity): lacking intestinal fortitude for the insult gutless. I’ll go through the examples in some detail, and then riff some on sophisticated insults, in various senses of sophisticated.
(more…)
Posted in Euphemism, Figurative language, Humor, Insults, Metaphor, Pragmatics, Slang, Style and register, Taboo language and slurs | 5 Comments »
November 22, 2024
(Well, consider the title if this posting, which tells you that it’s going to get into some vivid descriptions of sexual parts and sexual acts — plus a photo that’s just barely WordPressable — and you’ll see that it’s not suitable for kids or the sexually modest; and from here on, you’re going to get the C-word raw and unconcealed, but your enthusiasm for this dirty talk will probably be diminished when it turns out that this posting is mostly about lexical semantics)
(more…)
Posted in Address terms, Context, Dialects, Gay porn, Insults, Language and the body, Language change, Lexical semantics, Metaphor, Metonymy, Personification, Style and register, Taboo language and slurs, Variation | 6 Comments »
October 30, 2024
(Publicity for a gay porn video, entertaining in its way but absolutely off-limits for kids and the sexually modest)
🎃 🎃 🎃 three jack-o’-lanterns for penultimate October, Halloween Eve (that is, the day before the day before the day of the dead) — in my house, the day when the pussyboys go out to seek their phallic prey
Into this scene comes this morning’s e-mail from the Falcon | NakedSword Store, offering:
Hot House movie download discounts — full movies $11.95 each
With, right at the top, the crudely pun-titled video Swim Meat and its cover illustration, offering four fine pieces of swim meat, one (Johnny V’s) just barely concealed by his swimwear; plus three proudly jutting tubesteaks that I’ve had to suppress for WordPress modesty (but here you can view the uncensored cover, along with the publicity text):
(more…)
Posted in Compounds, Discourse organization, Gay porn, Holidays, Hyperbole, Language and the body, Language of sex, Language play, Lexical semantics, Metaphor, Puns, Semantics of compounds, Style and register, Taboo language and slurs | 1 Comment »
October 14, 2024
(About gay porn, with rapt attention to men’s bodies and sex between men, in street language, so entirely inappropriate for kids and the sexually modest)
Dirty Words is a new release from NakedSword Originals (in the Falcon family of gay porn studios). Not about dirty words ‘taboo vocabulary, offensive or indecent words’, but about dirty writing ‘sex writing’ (erotic fiction, sexual memoirs, sexual advice). The synopsis from the studio (divided into paragraphs for easier reading):
New York City has long been the playground of sex writer Zachary Zane, author of Boyslut: A Memoir and Manifesto. Threesomes, anonymous hook-ups, and sex parties are all in a day’s research, not to mention questions from blog fans who happen to spot him out and about at his favorite Manhattan haunts.
Even power-bottom stud Michael Boston stops him on the street for some advice on his relationship with fuck buddy Alexander Müller before Zachary finally heads to Fire Island for a few days of rest and relaxation. Quickly, though, Zachary learns that the summer getaway hotspot is packed with inquisitive readers, all of whom want a piece of him – for counsel, of course. What started as an escape from writing deadlines quickly becomes a crash course in better sex for Oliver Hunt, Harold Lopez, Matty West, Beaux Banks, and Axel Rockham.
By the time Zachary returns to his NYC stomping grounds, he’s ready for a vacation from his vacation – but not before weighing in on a kinky threeway that new pal Michael Boston is planning to have with buddies Braxton Cruz and Travis Connor. Never one to say no to a friend, Zachary dispenses wisdom and encouragement in his signature no-nonsense style, proving that he’s always willing to provide more than just the tips.
(more…)
Posted in Books, Color, Gay porn, Gender and sexuality, Language and the body, Language of sex, Language play, Rhyme, Signs and symbols, Taboo language and slurs, Writers | Leave a Comment »
