I came across this…interesting paragraph in a book that I’ve been taking notes from for my thesis. I’ll get to the paragraph in a moment, but first a bit on the book. It has already become somewhat popular here in the office due to its very nature. It’s a book devoted to national, racial, ethnic, sexist, what-have-you slurs. I’m writing a thesis on insults, so why not? It’s a fun book in its own right. Words Apart is a wonderfully fun book. Susan borrowed it to look up spaghetti-benders, and then Brad photocopied some articles out of it, and finally it ended up in Susan’s office for a few days while she perused its filthy humor. So, it’s making its rounds and I’m spreading slurs throughout the department rather than cheer and good will–go figure. At any rate, I came across this paragraph on page 198 of the book and just had to post it because it made me giggle so much. Enjoy!

     “And ‘French love’ itself was something a euphemism. Of all the clichés that bind France to sex, the nation’s supposed predilection for oral sex is perhaps the strongest. The verb to French arrives in the slang dictionaries – the mainstream works were still far too prudish – in the early 1960s. Its currency must have been earlier – American troops talked about the French way in 1917 – although such terms as eat (1927), and blow (1933) preceded it, at least for lexicographers. The synonymous go down emerged during World War I (in 1916). Its more rarified version, the mutually satisfying soixante-neuf or ‘sixty-nine’ appeared in 1888, when one P. Perret explained that ‘In familiar (page 199) language this divine variant of pleasure is called: faire soixante-neuf (literally, ‘to do 69′).’ (Thus the facetious 68: ‘you suck me and I’ll owe you one’.) It is in that same year that fellatio, still the ‘respectable’ word for Frenching also appears, defined by the notorious publisher Leonard Smithers (1861-1907, a friend inter alia of Wilde and Beardsley and characterized as ‘the most learned erotomaniac in Europe’) in his translation of Forberg’s Manual of Classical Erotology thus: ‘The verge [penis, from Latin virga: a rod], introduced into the mouth, wants to be tickled either by the lips or the tongue, and sucked; the party who does this service… is a fellator or sucker.’”