X-rated Words or Words you Won't See at the Kids' Bee

Well, after completing the list of 2710 words that I think are either very difficult or interesting words from the Scripps Howard Consolidated Word List, I kind of wonder how to proceed. I am loathe just to plow through them all one word at a time, instructive as that might be. I do realize, however, that patient working through words is, at least for me, the best way to enlarge my scope of knowledge about the world. I think a good way to learn about the world is through categories of words, such as skiing or equestrian or ballet or chemical or medical terms. Let's begin this essay with words you won't see at the kids' bee and then see where we degenerate from there.

Words You Won't See at the Bee

There are a host of words that appear in the dictionary that are rare and even quite difficult to spell that you certainly won't see at the Bee. There are sexual terms of course, like frottage or frotteur. Well, let's put it this way. The word frotton is on the list--and is taken from printing. It is a "dabber or burnisher used to press the damp sheet upon the inked block." The frotton is a small cushion of cloth stuffed with wool. But the French word frotter means to rub, and because the early 20th century was obsessed with sex (any different from today?), the root frott increasingly became used to speak about sexual perversions or "rubbings." Though frotton was coined in the 1870s, it was driven out of use by Ellis's book on the psychology of sex (1933) where he said: "The special perversion of frottage..consists in a desire to bring the clothed body, and usually though not exclusively the genital region, into close contact with the clothed body of a woman." It is, a later writer tells us, a "morbid development of the normal sexual excitatory effects of touching."

Well, once you have frottage, you have to have the guy (and it is usually a man) who does it. What is he? Well, he is a frotteur (there is no word frotteuse in English). Actually, he appeared 40 years before frottage was coined. In 1892 CG Chaddock, in translating Krafft-Ebing's Psychopathia Sexualis, talked about a certain kind of exhibition which "expresses itself in a peculiar act, conditioned by violent libido (hyper aesthesia sexualis), associated with diminshed virility, is made up of the so-called frotteurs." So, a violent libido is characteristic of those with diminished virility? Of course, this is just trashing people by saying that if you rub up against women you must not be a "real man." See how much knowledge there is just by following a word? Well, make sure you don't get this confused with frotolla, which came into English in the 19th century also, but is an Italian word meaning a comic song or ditty.

On Irrumation, Priapism, Satyriasis and Others

What else won't you find? Well, I bet that irrumation won't make it either. Before we get to that, I will note, however, that one sort of obscure sex term has made a comeback on network TV ads in the past two years: priapism. An internet search about Priapus, the Roman god of viticulture, horticulture, sailors and fertility, will yield all kinds of interesting pictures of this god with male member exposed. Priapism, as the Cialis commercials tell us, is an abnormally long (time, that is) erection--one lasting more than four hours. There are a host of interesting quotations on priapism in the OED, but one book from the early 18th century puts three terms together in one sentence. The book title is Onania and it talks about satryiasis or priapism. An 1875 quotation speaks about now "neither amatory desire nor true priapism is, however, a constant symptom in cantharidal poisoning."

The terms are starting to run away with and from us, so let's take them one at a time. Irrumation is from the Late Latin irrumare, to practice fellatio on someone. Because of Victorian "sensibilities," the general approach to irrumation in the "literature" since it was introduced into English in 1887 was negative. That 1887 reference was a translation of Forberg's 1824 Manual of Classical Erotology. Since Forberg was German and a classical scholar, the Manual ran to several volumes, and it depicted and described sexual material in artistic work from the classical era. But English-language authors left no doubt where they stood on the issue. From 1901 we have: "Very much more abominable and repulsive still is the habit of Irrumation (..to erect the penis and insert it into the mouth of another person)." The irrumator is one on whom fellatio is practiced according to the same 1901 quotation--"The irrumator...takes the fellator between his opened thighs." Thus, 106 years ago, the irrumator seemed to be the recipient of oral attention. However, if you look at at a dictionary today, irrumator is taken to be the same as a fellator. Which is it? Well, I ran across a 1981 article on the use of irrumare in Catullus and Martial (Roman poets), and I still am not sure...Some day I will have to sort out this mystery. [By the way, the ruma in irrumare is a breast, and irrumare originally meant "to give suck." Confusion deepens.]

Onanism, as you probably know, is something mentioned in the Bible (Gen. 38) or, more accurately, something associated with a guy named Onan who refused to perform his duties as levirate under Israelite law (to impregnate his deceased brother's wife). Yet, since we don't have the notion of levirate marriage in our culture, Onanism can't refer to that. It has, since the appearance of the German phrase "onanitischer Suende" (1642), been interpreted as masturbation. By 1710 the book Onania, or the Heinous Sin of Self-pollution... had been published in London, and Onan was thus seemingly forever associated with masturbatory practice.

Then, I have also mentioned satyriasis, which is basically the male version of nymphomania. Both of these were considered types of "insanity" in the 1870s, possibly caused by "spinal or cerebro-spinal affections." Named after the wild-eyed and lustful characters in Greek myths, satyriasis was also defined as a synonym for Priapism. Having long-in-duration erections was, in 1657, called by one author the "continuall standing of the Yard." "Yard" was a word that not only meant an enclosed area, the typical way we use the term today, but also a rod or stick and, specifically, "the virile member."

Conclusion

Well, this is enough of a distraction for me for the evening; now let's return to some of the work of the words.

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