2017年1月19日木曜日

Reproducting words

Observing the case ("Love being drunk"), it is perhaps natural to find out that the Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary (HTOED) records plentiful ways of describing the fundamental act of human being, a copulation. There are obviously myriads of the expressions regarding the sexual behaviour, and the thesaurus records 67 variations under the subcategory of “having sexual intercourse.”

The first citation is “play” from Old English poem: as an intransitive verb in a sense of “ engaging in amorous play, to make love; to have sexual intercourse with.” 

“ming” (mingle) is the earliest example of a transitive verb in a sense of “causing to associate (sometimes spec. in sexual intercourse); to unite in marriage”

One of the most common four letter words appears in the 16th century, although the record is found further back in the part of surname like “Fukkebotere” (c1290) or “Fuckebegger” (1287). The recent inventions are "bonk" (transitive 1975) and "shack" (intransitive 1976).

Looking through the list, what caught my eyes is that there are a number of basic common verbs that began to take on such sexual meaning. For example, even up to the end of 14th century, the following transitive verb seems to have carried the note:
“have” (OE)“know” (c. 1200) “touch” (c. 1384)“deal” (a. 1387)“use” (a. 1387) “take” (c. 1390) 
The meaning of words in OED is of course ascertained by modern researchers and lexicographers, so that grasping them depends heavily on how they interpret and understand the context of the work. Nonetheless, it is interesting to observe that many common verbs turned to assume the sexual nuance. The semantic application implies the importance of and accessibility to “bedding” (c. 1315). 

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