On 6/13/2011 12:08 PM, howard posner wrote: On Jun 8, 2011, at 6:36 AM, Catherine Arnott Smith wrote:
Re: "come" in the sense of orgasm: One of my research areas is the use of obscen ity to describe health concepts, so I happen to have encountered this question b efore. The OED Third dates this usage to "before 1650" and Partridge's Dictionar y of Slang and Unconventional English to 1600. I'm surprised by this, obviously, and I don't have an OED 3 or Partridge handy a nd won't get a chance to look at either any time soon. What examples do they gi ve? My university hasn't got a digital Partridge (haven't checked to see if there IS a digital Partridge, actually) but I can check that in print later and report back-- Partridge really is the authority for slang, which is the category under which obscenity usually falls. The digital OED 3rd, however, gives this as meaning # 17, "To experience sexual orgasm. Also with off. slang." and cites "a1650 Walking in Meadow Green in Bp. Percy's Loose Songs (1868) , Then off he came, & blusht for shame soe soone that he had endit." [A1650 means the usage predates 1650] This made me want to go and look for Bishop Percy's Loose Songs, which based on the title alone sounds like a lot of fun. -- Catherine Arnott Smith, PhD Assistant Professor School of Library and Information Studies Room 4255 Helen C. White Hall 600 N. Park Street, Madison, WI 53706 Phone: (608) 890-1334 Fax: (608) 263-4849 My personal website: [1]https://mywebspace.wisc.edu/casmith24/web/ *** The machine does not isolate us from the great problems of nature but plunges us more deeply into them.(Antoine de Saint-Exupery) *** Music is neither old nor modern: it is either good or bad music, and the date at which it was written has no significance whatever. (Peter Warlock - The Sackbut - 1926) -- References 1. https://mywebspace.wisc.edu/casmith24/web/ To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
