Sex Slang

‘ In the world of slang, sex slang is about as good as it gets. You can pretend to be appalled by this slang, if not the sexual practices described, but if you weren’t amused with the wit and creativity of unconventional vocabulary you wouldn’t be holding this book in your hands in the first place.’

From the preface by Tom Dalzell and Terry Victor

Sex Slang

Tom Dalzell and Terry Victor

First published 2008 by Routledge

2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, OX14 4RN Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge

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This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2007.

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© 2008 Tom Dalzell and Terry Victor

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Dalzell, Tom, 1951

Sex slang / Tom Dalzell and Terry Victor.

p.cm.

1.Sex – Terminology 2. Sex – Slang – Dictionaries. I. Victor, Terry. II. Title

HQ9.D325 2007 306.7703–dc22 2007028913

ISBN 0-203-93577-2 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN10: 0-415-37180-5 (pbk)

ISBN10: 0-203-93577-2 (ebk)

ISBN13: 978-0-415-37180-3 (pbk)

ISBN13: 978-0-203-93577-4 (ebk)

CONTENTS

sexually transmitted infections 184

PREFACE

In the world of slang, sex slang is about as good as it gets. You can pretend to be appalled by this slang, if not the sexual practices described, but if you weren’t amused with the wit and creativity of unconventional vocabulary you wouldn’t be holding this book in your hands in the first place.

We are hard-wired for a linguistic resourcefulness that always matches, and usually surpasses, our physical and sexual invention. Most sexual slang represents practices as old as the ages – newly discovered, of course, by the next generation. New sexual activity is extremely rare but you will find there’s always a word for it in these pages.

The need for slang as an intimate language and defender of moral transgression is readily apparent. As the next generation is always inventing sex for the first time sex can never be entirely conventional. The excitement of discovery and danger, of outrage and rebellion against the mainstream, is evident in this small dictionary of sex slang.

This volume consists of approximately 3,000 headword entries drawn in large part from our New Partridge Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English, in which we recorded slang and unconventional English heard anywhere in the English-speaking world any time since 1945. In that work and here we included pidgin, Creolized English and borrowed foreign terms used by English speakers in primarily English-language conversation. We excluded no term on the ground that it might be considered offensive as a racial, ethnic, religious, sexual or other slur. This dictionary contains many entries and citations that will, and should, offend.

We used UK spelling for definitions and our commentary but used indigenous spelling for headwords and citations. This is especially relevant in the case of the UK arse and US ass. For Yiddish words, we used Leo Rostens spelling, which favours shover sch-. An initialism is shown in upper case without full stops (for example, BJ), except that acronyms (pronounced like individual lexical items) are lower case (for example, milf).

Phrases are, as a rule, placed under their first significant word. For example, the phrase ‘get your ashes hauled’ is listed as a phrase under the headword ash. By this placement scheme, we sought to avoid the endless pages of entries starting with prepositions or common verbs such as get.

In dealing with slang from all seven continents, we encountered more than a few culturespecific term’s. For such terms, we identified the domain or geographic location of the term’s usage. We used conventional English in the definitions, turning to slang only when it is both substantially more economical than the use of conventional English and readily understood by the average reader.

The country of origin reflects the origin of the earliest citation found for the headword. As is the case with dating, further research will undoubtedly produce a shift in the country of origin for a number of our entries. We resolutely avoided guesswork and informed opinion.

We recognize that the accurate dating of slang is far more difficult than dating conventional language. Virtually every word in our lexicon is spoken before it is written, and this is especially true of unconventional terms. We dated a term to indicate the earliest citation that we discovered.

For each entry, we included a quotation, a citation or a gloss explaining where the term was collected. Sheer joy is often found expressed in these quotations, while the citations and glosses give a sense of when and where the term was found.

No more foreplay! Enough beating about the bush! Time to get down to some serious reading and it just doesn’t get much better than sexual slang.

But remember: too much of a good thing may make you go blind.

Tom Dalzell, Berkeley, California

Terry Victor, Caerwent, Wales

Late Spring 2007

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Our debt to Sophie Oliver defies description. With good humour and a saintly tolerance for our so-called wit and attempts to corrupt, she herded this project through from a glimmer in the eye to print on the page.

We bow to and thank the following who helped along the way: Mary Ann Kernan, who was charged with putting this project together in 1999 and 2000; John Williams, who must be credited for all that is right about our lexicography and excused for anything that is not; our contributors to the New Partridge, Richard Allsopp, Diane Bardsley, James Lambert, John Loftus, Lewis Poteet; and our Sex and Vice task-mistress Sonja van Leeuwen.

Tom Dalzell and Terry Victor

This dictionary would never have seen the light of day without the time and support given me by my family. To protect the innocent from the dubious honour of being thanked in a context such as this, they will remain for these purposes nameless.

I thank: my slang mentors Paul Dickson and Madeline Kripke (and better mentors you could not hope for); Archie Green, who saved Peter Tamony’s work for posterity and encouraged me throughout this project; Reinold Aman, Jesse Sheidlower, Jonathan Green and Susan Ford, slang lexicographers, friends and comrades-in-words; Dr. Jerry Zientara, the learned, witty and helpful librarian at the Institute for Advanced Study of Human Sexuality in San Francisco, which kindly opened its incomparable library to me; Tom Miller, Bill Stolz, John Konzal and Patricia Walker, archivists at the Western Historical Manuscript Collection, University of Missouri at Columbia, for their help and insights during my work with the Peter Tamony archives; Jim Holliday for his help on the slang of pornography; Jennifer Goldstein for her help on the slang of sex dancers; and Richard Perlman for his patient technological help.

Lastly, I acknowledge Terry Victor. With his joy of life and sexual puns, he has made a considerable mark on the last eight years.

Tom Dalzell

Liz, for her patience and tolerance, and above all for her smiles that seem to say ‘ Well, what else could I expect from the man I married?’ My Liz. Thank you.

My inspirations cannot go unacknowledged; the seductive swirl of their slang led a young man astray, especially Barry Took and Marty Feldman for ‘ Jules & Sand’; Ray Galton and Alan Simpson for ‘ Steptoe & Son’, Barry Humphries for ‘ Barry McKenzie’, and Ronnie Barker for

‘ Fletcher’. They got me started, long before I had ever heard of Eric Partridge.

But, above all, Tom Dalzell must be named and shamed as the Sultan of Slang, for his scholarship and generosity - my passionate affair with the dark niches of our tongue would be just a secret fantasy without him.

Terry Victor