Friday, August 16, 2013

Extensive timelines of slang for genitalia

The title says it all.
Jonathon Green, a slang lexicographer, has two new timelines. The first is an interactive timeline that shows slang for male genitalia going all the way back to the 1300s up to present. Colors and shapes represent different parts.
Names for the male member

 Go here for the timeline for female genitalia. It has slang terms that date back to 1250.

via Infographics

9 comments:

ndspinelli said...

In the series Deadwood, they use the term, "Johnson." I thought it was not correct for the late 1800's. I was wrong. Thanks for the timeline of tallywags.

William said...

And yet there are no slang terms for the lower lumbar spine which some people think about far more obsessively, if not affectionately, than any other body part. While the lower back can, over a lifetime, cause as many problems as a penis or vagina, it does not have the compensating power of genetalia to cheer you up on a bad day.

William said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
edutcher said...

The names for ladyparts are, of course, a bit more lyrical.

Chip Ahoy said...

Man, I can buy this book for 1₵, Ancient Evenings has what I recall to be 12 pages, but probably one page, where the guy is in his fourth incantationxxxx incarcerationxxxx incarnation, as a guy working his way up by using the sickest Egyptian magic imaginable, leave it to Mailer to imagine it, he picks his own future mother by having sex with her and dying in the act of passing his seed so that his spirit follows. He cleverly moves upward by screwing upward and one of his lifetimes is an accident when her son catches him and throws a spear into his back. Oops. Now the wicked man will become the prince's younger brother.

While they're doing it she's talking dirty to him in Egyptian, but I think it is contrived. It goes back and forth between a poetic form of Egyptian sweary dirty talk coming from her, and the English interpretation, for what I recall pages and pages, I don't know for sure, but a very long time, in which she recites every phallic symbol known to the ancient world including spears, knives, shafts, masts, javelins, tent poles, oars, various odd fetishes, obelisk, she starts off,

"You smell like a horse."

Indeed, I had just rode in from the royal stables.

Bizz-zah as it is, I could use that book. I was thinking as reading the portion about the boy falling asleep in the pharaoh's room while his parents were having an orgy with the pharaoh. As the boy fell asleep he described the animals on the painted walls and it is the most amazing description I've ever read. Made up, of course, but still the most imaginative.

Chip Ahoy said...

Get how Mailer described some lights on the porch.

Eerily glowing. Unsteadily. Sort of pulsating. He could not imagine what was making the light, not a candle, not an oil lamp, stranger than that, then it occurred to him, fireflies! Thousands of fireflies in each of the porch lamps with fitted papyrus shades.

Then he imagined the hundreds if not thousands of household staff running all over the grounds in the few hours the bugs are active, just for the light of six or so lamps for one single evening.

Aridog said...

All I wanted to find out was when the penis name "dick" was first used. No luck. Anyone who finds that, please advise. Thank you.

That has to be the most irritating awkward graphic ever. Barely usable for me. I have again proven my credentials for putz-hood ... e.g. "dick-headed-ness."

Aridog said...

Being silly, I tried again to find my nick name. No luck for just "dick", but I did find several others where the nick was combined with other words:

"Stormy Dick" from 1944 ...I was 2 years old so I can't verify.

"Needle Dick" alleged for 1969, which is in error, it was definitely in use in the 1950's when I was in high school, as "needle dick the bug fucker."

"Pin Dick" alleged for 2009..nonsense, it was also used in the 1950's with the same connotation as "needle dick".

Maybe it's just the periods he discovered the terms in published print (if so I missed that caveat)...still way off on the two I cited in terms of first use.

I did not find "dick-head" cited in any period between 1942 and 2009 (where I stopped looking) however, I can guarant-f'ing-tee you it was in use in my 1950's high school days...hell, I even answered to it then, and now.

The is one other former commenter from TOP days who went to high school where I did, a couple years behind me, who can verify the usage. Haven't seen him here, but he's on LI occasionally.

yashu said...

All I wanted to find out was when the penis name "dick" was first used.

According to the OED, it's been around since the 19th century.

3b. The penis. coarse.
1891   in J. S. Farmer Slang  
1929   F. Manning Middle Parts of Fortune I. v. 95   Dost turn thysen to t'wall, lad, so's us 'ns sha'n't see tha dick?
1934   H. Miller Tropic of Cancer 68   That circumcised dick of his.
1963   J. T. Story Something for Nothing ii. 42   At a time when sex was being introduced into the school curriculum as something entirely new, they were already playing ‘dicks and bums’ with boisterous enjoyment.
1969   P. Roth Portnoy's Complaint 79   You might have thought that..my dick would have been the last thing on my mind.