What can I say?

[lookin]

In another thread, MsGuy posited that there were only so many ways to say, "Boy, that kid sure gives me a stiffie."

While this may in fact be the case it seems that, in the millennia that folks have been lusting after youthful hardbodies, there must have been more than just a handful of such observations.

One I recall, from an old book on lust through the ages, is that of a Persian gentleman that went something along the lines of, There's a boy across the river with a bottom like a peach but, alas, I cannot swim.

Can't think of it at the moment, but there's another one on the tip of my tongue.

I understand AdamSmith is on the hunt for such phrases through the ages. Anyone else have any favorites?

[MsGuy]

"He fills those Calvins pretty nicely."

(borrowed from a recent AS post )

[AdamSmith]

Some light etymological musings not on 'stiffie' but just the generic root (so to speak ). Research continues!

Lumpy

05-25-2003, 04:43 PM

"Penis" is from Latin, and every other commonly used word for it in English is an obvious slang phrase. What was it's proper name back in ye olde times?

MC Master of Ceremonies

05-25-2003, 05:15 PM

'Cock'

astro

05-25-2003, 05:50 PM

Possibly "pintle". (http://www.bartleby.com/61/0/P0320000.html)

pintle

SYLLABICATION: pin·tle

PRONUNCIATION: pntl

NOUN: 1. A pin or a bolt on which another part pivots. 2. Nautical The pin on which a rudder turns. 3. The pin on which a gun carriage revolves. 4. A hook or a bolt on the rear of a towing vehicle for attaching a gun or trailer.

ETYMOLOGY: Middle English pintel, penis, from Old English.

Johanna

05-25-2003, 05:53 PM

Wrong, MC Master of Ceremonies. Cock means a male chicken and was used to refer to the penis only metaphorically. Besides, it isn't from Old English at all. It came from French, derived from Latin coccus, a cackling.

The real answer to the OP is pintel. The word survives in Modern English as pintle, meaning a pin on which a rudder or gun pivots. Also the second part of cuckoopint (http://www.edensong.com/garden/plants2001/cuckoopint-fruit2.jpg), originally cuckoopintel, a flower (Arum maculatum) with a phallic shape. Joseph Wood Crutch writes in his great book of botanical folklore, Herbal,No "signature" is more immodestly evident than that provided by the very phallic central column (actually a spadix bearing the small male and female flowers) and most of the popular names embody evidence, now somewhat obscured, that the folk imagination had deciphered the signature. Cuckoopint is short for Cuckoopintel, and Wake-Robin (though now gently poetic) was clear enough to those same Elizabethans who snickered when the mad Ophelia sang "For bonnie sweets, Robin is all my joy."

...It is the later Herbalists who stress the supposed effectiveness of the Arums as aphrodisiacs.... Here is what Coles has to say of the Cuckoopint:

"It hath not only the signature which will sufficiently declare itself but the virtues also according to the signature, for they are notable for stirring up of inclination to copulation, being either well roasted under the embers or boiled." He then adds that among other names are Sacerdotis Penis, or, In English, Priests Pintle.

Johanna

05-25-2003, 06:02 PM

astro, I woula been first out of the box if I hadn't taken the time to delve deeper into the philology.

I just want everyone to be conscious that answering GQ questions is more than merely a matter of Googling. To really dig into a question, often it helps to have read widely, to be able to draw upon a wealth of associations in one's memory, and to have a library of books at hand to research knowledge further than Google can take you.

Agback

05-25-2003, 07:47 PM

G'day

'Pintle' is originally derived from Old English 'pintel', which was a general term for pointed things. So even this is probably a euphemism, just an obsolete one. 'Prick' is another word for a penis that originally means 'pointed thing', and there are similar words in lots of other languages (eg. Danish 'pic', Swedish 'pick', Dutch 'tump', Russian 'chuj', Greek 'charkion', Spanish 'carajo').

'Zerd' is another old word for penis (now spelled 'yard'). It originally meant 'rod' or 'staff'.

In Old English there was also 'woepned' (the 'oe' is a ligature), which is a masculine form of 'woepen' (weapon). And 'teors' (related to the term for the boss of a shield-- it survives as the dialectal 'tarse', meaning penis). And 'teran' (etymology in doubt). Records of Old English are sadly few, so the undoubted use of words meaning 'swelling', 'tail', 'tassel', 'nail', 'tool', 'powerful thing', 'creative object', 'spear', 'sword', 'peg' etc. is not attested.

According to Carl Darling Buck the Prote-Indo-European word has been reconstructed as '*pes-' or '*pesos-', from which Greek 'peos', Latin 'penis', Sanskrit 'pasas', Old High German 'faselt', and Modern English 'pizzle'-- my suggestion for the 'proper' English word for the membrum virile.

Regards,

Agback

bibliophage

05-25-2003, 08:03 PM

Just to throw in a few dates from the OED for synonyms older than "penis" in English (not all derived from Anglo-Saxon):

ca. 1000 tarse

ca. 1100 pintle

ca. 1300 pillicock

ca. 1400 verge

1483 tail

1523 pizzle

1592 prickle/prick

1618 cock

Agback

05-25-2003, 08:09 PM

Originally posted by Agback

According to Carl Darling Buck the Prote-Indo-European word has been reconstructed as '*pes-' or '*pesos-', from which Greek 'peos', Latin 'penis', Sanskrit 'pasas', Old High German 'faselt', and Modern English 'pizzle'-- my suggestion for the 'proper' English word for the membrum virile.

My apologies, you weere asking for an Old English word, not the Modern English word of native etymology with a non-figurative derivation. 'Pizzle' is not attested in writing before 1532, and its existence in some form such as '*pisel' or '*fisel' in earlier times would be conjectural--it might be derived from Dutch, or Frisian rather than Middle English. The words actually attested from Old English (a.k.a. Anglo-Saxon) would be the euphemisms I gave above: woepned, teors, teran, pintel.

Regards,

Agback

Lumpy

05-27-2003, 07:17 PM

Hmm... so we have a part of the body that effectively has no name of it's own, but has been referred to by euphenisms in every Indo-European language as far back as we have records. There's a profound implication somewhere there.

Agback

05-27-2003, 07:35 PM

Originally posted by Lumpy

Hmm... so we have a part of the body that effectively has no name of it's own, but has been referred to by euphenisms in every Indo-European language as far back as we have records.

Not exactly. PIE "*pesos", Sanskrit "pasos", Greek "peos", Latin "penis", OHG "faselt", and modern English "pizzle" are all 'proper' (ie. non-figurative) words for the male organ of generation. Cognate, too. But euphemisms, metaphors, and joke terms are rife.

on the other hand, there is something to be said for the position that in English anyway, any masculine personal name and any improper noun or noun phrase can be used to refer to the genitals with perfect comprehensibility. If I tell you that so-and-so got kicked in the coach and horses, or that I want to try out my socket wrench, there is no doubt what I mean, even though (as far as I know) neither metaphor has ever been used before. I think that tells us something.

Regards,

Agback

http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/archive/index.php/t-186295.html