Latin obscenity is the profane, indecent, or
impolite
Rudeness (also called effrontery) is a display of actual or perceived disrespect by not complying with the social norms or etiquette of a group or culture. These norms have been established as the essential boundaries of normally accepted beha ...
vocabulary of
Latin
Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...
, and its uses. Words deemed obscene were described as (obscene, lewd, unfit for public use), or (improper, in
poor taste, undignified). Documented obscenities occurred rarely in classical Latin literature, limited to certain types of writing such as
epigrams, but they are commonly used in the graffiti written on the walls of
Pompeii and
Herculaneum.
Among the documents of interest in this area is a letter written by Cicero in 45 BC (''ad Fam.'' 9.22) to a friend called Paetus, in which he alludes to a number of obscene words without actually naming them.
Apart from graffiti, the writers who used obscene words most were
Catullus
Gaius Valerius Catullus (; 84 - 54 BCE), often referred to simply as Catullus (, ), was a Latin poet of the late Roman Republic who wrote chiefly in the neoteric style of poetry, focusing on personal life rather than classical heroes. His ...
and
Martial in their shorter poems. Another source is the anonymous ''
Priapeia
The ''Priapeia'' (or ''Carmina Priapea'') is a collection of eighty (in some editions ninety-five) anonymous short Latin poems in various meters on subjects pertaining to the phallic god Priapus. They are believed to date from the 1st century AD ...
'' (see External links below), a collection of 95 epigrams supposedly written to adorn statues of the fertility god
Priapus, whose wooden image was customarily set up to protect orchards against thieves. The earlier poems of
Horace also contained some obscenities. However, the satirists
Persius
Aulus Persius Flaccus (; 4 December 3424 November 62 AD) was a Roman poet and satirist of Etruscan origin. In his works, poems and satires, he shows a Stoic wisdom and a strong criticism for what he considered to be the stylistic abuses of his ...
and
Juvenal
Decimus Junius Juvenalis (), known in English as Juvenal ( ), was a Roman poet active in the late first and early second century CE. He is the author of the collection of satirical poems known as the '' Satires''. The details of Juvenal's life ...
, although often describing obscene acts, did so without mentioning the obscene words.
Medical, especially
veterinary
Veterinary medicine is the branch of medicine that deals with the prevention, management, diagnosis, and treatment of disease, disorder, and injury in animals. Along with this, it deals with animal rearing, husbandry, breeding, research on nutri ...
, texts also use certain anatomical words that, outside of their technical context, might have been considered obscene.
Latin taboo words
Cicero's letter ''ad Fam.'' 9.22
In a letter to one of his friends, written about 45 BC,
Cicero
Marcus Tullius Cicero ( ; ; 3 January 106 BC – 7 December 43 BC) was a Roman statesman, lawyer, scholar, philosopher, and academic skeptic, who tried to uphold optimate principles during the political crises that led to the esta ...
discusses a number of obscenities in Latin. It appears that the friend, Lucius Papirius Paetus, (whose letters to Cicero have not been preserved) had used the word ("penis") in one of his letters. Cicero praises him for his forthrightness, which he says conforms to the teachings of the
Stoic
Stoic may refer to:
* An adherent of Stoicism; one whose moral quality is associated with that school of philosophy
* STOIC, a programming language
* ''Stoic'' (film), a 2009 film by Uwe Boll
* ''Stoic'' (mixtape), a 2012 mixtape by rapper T-Pain
* ...
philosophers, but says that he himself prefers modesty ().
In the letter Cicero alludes to a number of obscene words, without actually mentioning them. The words which he alludes to but avoids are: ("arsehole"), ("penis"), ("cunt"), ("clitoris"), and ("testicles"). He also objects to words which mean "to fuck", as well as to the Latin word "two" because for bilingual speakers it sounds like the Greek () ("he fucks or sodomises"), and also to two words for passing wind, and . He does not object to using the word , and says that , which in his day was obscene, was formerly just a euphemism meaning "tail".
Degrees of obscenity
There thus appear to have been various degrees of obscenity in Latin, with words for anything to do with sex in the most obscene category. These words are strictly avoided in most types of Latin literature; however, they are common in
graffiti
Graffiti (plural; singular ''graffiti'' or ''graffito'', the latter rarely used except in archeology) is art that is written, painted or drawn on a wall or other surface, usually without permission and within public view. Graffiti ranges from s ...
, and also in certain
genre
Genre () is any form or type of communication in any mode (written, spoken, digital, artistic, etc.) with socially-agreed-upon conventions developed over time. In popular usage, it normally describes a category of literature, music, or other for ...
s of poetry, such as the short poems known as
epigrams, such as those written by
Catullus
Gaius Valerius Catullus (; 84 - 54 BCE), often referred to simply as Catullus (, ), was a Latin poet of the late Roman Republic who wrote chiefly in the neoteric style of poetry, focusing on personal life rather than classical heroes. His ...
and
Martial. The poet
Horace also used obscenities in his early poems, that is the ''
Epodes'' and the first book of ''
Satires
Satire is a genre of the visual, literary, and performing arts, usually in the form of fiction and less frequently non-fiction, in which vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, often with the intent of shaming or ...
'', but later writers of satire such as
Juvenal
Decimus Junius Juvenalis (), known in English as Juvenal ( ), was a Roman poet active in the late first and early second century CE. He is the author of the collection of satirical poems known as the '' Satires''. The details of Juvenal's life ...
and
Persius
Aulus Persius Flaccus (; 4 December 3424 November 62 AD) was a Roman poet and satirist of Etruscan origin. In his works, poems and satires, he shows a Stoic wisdom and a strong criticism for what he considered to be the stylistic abuses of his ...
avoided the coarser words even when discussing obscene topics. There were, however, some occasions in public life, such as in triumphal processions, at weddings, and at certain festivals, where obscenities were traditionally allowed. The purpose of these was presumably twofold, first to ward off the evil eye or potential envy of the gods, and second to promote fertility.
Euphemistic expressions
A very common way of avoiding words for sexual acts was simply to omit the word in question. J.N. Adams collects numerous examples of this. For example, in Horace (''Epodes'' 12.15):
:
::("You are capable of
aving sex withInachia three times in a night.")
Another way was to substitute the taboo word with a milder one or a metaphor, for example using ("rump (of an animal)") for or for .
Sometimes the offending word was replaced by a pronoun such as ("that") or an adverb such as ("there"), as in Martial (11.104.16):
:
::("And when the
Ithacan was snoring, modest though she was,
Penelope
Penelope ( ; Ancient Greek: Πηνελόπεια, ''Pēnelópeia'', or el, Πηνελόπη, ''Pēnelópē'') is a character in Homer's ''Odyssey.'' She was the queen of Ithaca and was the daughter of Spartan king Icarius and naiad Periboea. Pe ...
always kept her hand ''there''.")
: the penis
is the basic Latin word for
penis
A penis (plural ''penises'' or ''penes'' () is the primary sexual organ that male animals use to inseminate females (or hermaphrodites) during copulation. Such organs occur in many animals, both vertebrate and invertebrate, but males d ...
. It is used 48 times in Martial, 26 times in the ''
Priapeia
The ''Priapeia'' (or ''Carmina Priapea'') is a collection of eighty (in some editions ninety-five) anonymous short Latin poems in various meters on subjects pertaining to the phallic god Priapus. They are believed to date from the 1st century AD ...
'', and 18 times in Pompeian inscriptions. Its status as a basic obscenity is confirmed by the
Priapeia
The ''Priapeia'' (or ''Carmina Priapea'') is a collection of eighty (in some editions ninety-five) anonymous short Latin poems in various meters on subjects pertaining to the phallic god Priapus. They are believed to date from the 1st century AD ...
29, in which and are given as ideal examples of obscene words:
:
:: ("May I die if it doesn't shame me
to use obscene and improper words;
but when you,
Priapus, as a god, shamelessly
show me your balls hanging out,
it is appropriate for me to speak of cunts and cocks.")
Martial mocks a friend who despised effeminate clothing, explaining why he suspects that he is secretly homosexual:
:
:: ("He will ask why I suspect him to be a 'soft' man.
We go to the baths together. He never looks at anything above,
but examines the athletes with devouring eyes,
and looks at their dicks with constantly moving lips.")
A (the word occurs only in Martial), according to Housman, was a man "who performs feats of strength in public". Rabun Taylor disagrees and sees a more as a kind of rent boy who hung around in the baths in search of patrons.
also frequently appears in the poetry of Catullus. He uses as a
nickname
A nickname is a substitute for the proper name of a familiar person, place or thing. Commonly used to express affection, a form of endearment, and sometimes amusement, it can also be used to express defamation of character. As a concept, it is ...
for
Mamurra
Mamurra () was a Roman military officer who served under Julius Caesar.
Biography Early life
Possibly named Marcus Vitruvius Mamurra (if we follow Thielscher's 1969 suggestion based on an inscription in Thibilis), he was an equestrian who origin ...
, as if it were an ordinary name, as in his epigram 105:
:
:: ("That prick tries to climb the Pimpleian mount (of poetry);
the
Muses drive him out with pitchforks.")
(
Pimpleia
Pimpleia (Ancient Greek: Πίμπλεια) was a city in Pieria in Ancient Greece, located near Dion and ancient Leivithra at Mount Olympus. Pimpleia is described as a "κώμη" ("quarter, suburb") of Dion by Strabo. The location of Pimpleia i ...
was a place in
Pieria in northern Greece associated with the Muses (the nine goddesses of poetry and music).)
Etymology
The etymology of is obscure, although outwardly it would appear to be a
diminutive of , gen. , the "mind" (i.e.; "the little mind"). Cicero's letter 9:22 relates it to , a
spearmint
Spearmint, also known as garden mint, common mint, lamb mint and mackerel mint, is a species of mint, ''Mentha spicata'' (, native to Europe and southern temperate Asia, extending from Ireland in the west to southern China in the east. It is nat ...
stalk. Tucker's ''Etymological Dictionary of Latin'' relates it to , "to project outwards", , "chin", and , "a mountain", all of which suggest an
Indo-European
The Indo-European languages are a language family native to the overwhelming majority of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and the northern Indian subcontinent. Some European languages of this family, English, French, Portuguese, Russian, Dutc ...
root *''men-''. Other hypotheses have also been suggested, though none generally accepted.
Synonyms and metaphors
is also a basic Latin obscenity for "penis", in particular for a penis with the
foreskin
In male human anatomy, the foreskin, also known as the prepuce, is the double-layered fold of skin, mucosal and muscular tissue at the distal end of the human penis that covers the glans and the urinary meatus. The foreskin is attached to the ...
retracted due to
erection and
glans
The glans (, plural "glandes" ; from the Latin word for "acorn") is a vascular structure located at the tip of the penis in male mammals or a homologous genital structure of the clitoris in female mammals.
Structure
The exterior structure ...
exposed, as in the illustration of the god Mercury below. As a result, it was "not a neutral technical term, but an emotive and highly offensive word", most commonly used in despective or threatening contexts of violent acts against a fellow male or rival rather than mere sex ( "fucking"). It is found frequently in graffiti of the type (= ) ("Whoever reads this, you're a dickhead").
It is found less frequently in Classical Latin literature, but it does appear in Catullus 28:
:
:: ("O Memmius, while I lay on my back for a long time
you fed me good and slow with that entire beam of yours.
But as far as I can see, you guys have met with the same fate:
for you have been stuffed with a "verpa" no less large!")
Catullus is here speaking metaphorically. He complains that when he accompanied
Gaius Memmius, the governor of
Bithynia (57-56 BC), as part of his entourage, he was not allowed to make money out of the position. From this poem it is clear that Catullus's friends Veranius and Fabullus were kept under an equally close rein when they accompanied
Lucius Piso
Lucius ( el, Λούκιος ''Loukios''; ett, Luvcie) is a male given name derived from ''Lucius'' (abbreviated ''L.''), one of the small group of common Latin forenames (''praenomina'') found in the culture of ancient Rome. Lucius derives from L ...
to his province of Macedonia in 57-55 BC.
By extension, as a masculine adjective or noun, referred to a man whose was exposed by
erection or by
circumcision
Circumcision is a procedure that removes the foreskin from the human penis. In the most common form of the operation, the foreskin is extended with forceps, then a circumcision device may be placed, after which the foreskin is excised. Top ...
; thus
Juvenal
Decimus Junius Juvenalis (), known in English as Juvenal ( ), was a Roman poet active in the late first and early second century CE. He is the author of the collection of satirical poems known as the '' Satires''. The details of Juvenal's life ...
(14.100) has
:
:: ("To guide only the circumcised
.e. Jewsto the fountain that they seek").
And in poem 47 Catullus writes:
:
:: ("Did that unsheathed
Priapus prefer you guys
to my little Veranius and
Fabullus?")
In Martial's time, it was a common practice for actors and athletes to be fitted with a (a pin or brooch covering the foreskin) to prevent accidental exposure of the , discouraging sex and thereby preserving their voice or strength. Martial (7.81) mocks one such actor as follows:
:
::("Such a big brooch clothes Menophilus's penis
that it is enough for all the comic actors in the world.
I believed (since we often go to the baths together)
that he was anxious to preserve his voice, Flaccus.
But one day, while he was wrestling in the middle of the
palaestra
A palaestra ( or ;
also (chiefly British) palestra; grc-gre, παλαίστρα) was any site of an ancient Greek wrestling school. Events requiring little space, such as boxing and wrestling, took place there. Palaestrae functioned both indep ...
with everyone watching,
the poor man's brooch fell off. He was circumcised!")
or
A third word for "penis" was (or ). This is very rare and found only in one line of Horace and a fragment of the satirist
Lucilius
The gens Lucilia was a plebeian family at ancient Rome. The most famous member of this gens was the poet Gaius Lucilius, who flourished during the latter part of the second century BC.''Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology'', vo ...
. The passage in Horace (''Sat.'' 1.2.68) is as follows, in which he advises a young man who was beaten up as a result of an affair with the dictator
Sulla's daughter:
:
::("What if, in the words of his penis, his mind were to say to the man when he sees such troubles: 'What exactly do you want? Do I ever demand a cunt descended from a famous
consul
Consul (abbrev. ''cos.''; Latin plural ''consules'') was the title of one of the two chief magistrates of the Roman Republic, and subsequently also an important title under the Roman Empire. The title was used in other European city-states throu ...
or veiled in a fancy gown when my passion grows hot?'")
And Lucilius says, referring to the fact that Roman men apparently used to masturbate with their left hand:
:
::("But with his left hand as his girlfriend, he wipes away his ''muttōs tears.")
The word may be related to the marriage deity
Mutunus Tutunus
In ancient Roman religion, Mutunus Tutunus or Mutinus Titinus was a phallic marriage deity, in some respects equated with Priapus. His shrine was located on the Velian Hill, supposedly since the founding of Rome, until the 1st century BC.
During p ...
.
Although itself is rare, the derivative ("well-endowed") is found twice in Martial, as at 3.73:
:
::("You sleep with well-endowed boys, Phoebus,
and the thing that stands up for them does not stand up for you.")
The derivative , meaning the same as , is found in Lucilius and in two Pompeian graffiti.
The Latin word itself originally meant "
tail
The tail is the section at the rear end of certain kinds of animals’ bodies; in general, the term refers to a distinct, flexible appendage to the torso. It is the part of the body that corresponds roughly to the sacrum and coccyx in mammal ...
". Cicero's , 9.22, observes that originally was an innocuous word, but that the meaning of male sexual organ had become primary by his day. The euphemism is used occasionally by Catullus, Persius, Juvenal, and Martial, and even once by the historian
Sallust
Gaius Sallustius Crispus, usually anglicised as Sallust (; 86 – ), was a Roman historian and politician from an Italian plebeian family. Probably born at Amiternum in the country of the Sabines, Sallust became during the 50s BC a partisan ...
, who writes that the supporters of the anti-government rebel
Catiline
Lucius Sergius Catilina ( 108 BC – January 62 BC), known in English as Catiline (), was a Roman politician and soldier. He is best known for instigating the Catilinarian conspiracy, a failed attempt to violently seize control of the ...
included
:
::("whatever shameless man, adulterer, or glutton had ruined his ancestral property by hand, stomach, or 'tail'")
Commenting on this passage,
St Augustine
Augustine of Hippo ( , ; la, Aurelius Augustinus Hipponensis; 13 November 354 – 28 August 430), also known as Saint Augustine, was a theologian and philosopher of Berber origin and the bishop of Hippo Regius in Numidia, Roman North Afr ...
notes that Sallust's use of the term in this phrase was not offensive. The word did not survive into Romance, however, and occurs only once in a Pompeian inscription.
Juvenal
Decimus Junius Juvenalis (), known in English as Juvenal ( ), was a Roman poet active in the late first and early second century CE. He is the author of the collection of satirical poems known as the '' Satires''. The details of Juvenal's life ...
, showing his knack for describing grossly obscene matters without using taboo words, writes as follows in one of his satires (9.43-4):
:
::("Or do you think it is an easy or straightforward thing to drive a proper-sized 'tail'
inside someone's guts and there meet with yesterday's dinner?")
Another euphemism for the penis was ("tail"), which occurs twice in
Horace, and continues today in the French derivative ("tail" or "penis"). In one place in his ''Satires'' (''Serm.'' 2.7.50) Horace writes:
:
::("Whichever girl receives the blows of my swelling 'tail',
or when I'm on my back sexily rides my 'horse' with her buttocks,
sends me away neither with a bad reputation nor worried that
a richer or more handsome guy might piss in the same place.")
For the metaphorical use of ("to piss"), see below.
The words ("nerve" or "sinew") and In one of Horace's Epodes (12) a woman boasts of one of her lovers,
Coan Amyntas,
:
::("on whose indomitable groin a sinew grows,
more constant than a new tree clings to the hills.")
or
or , which meant a phallic image or amulet in the form of a penis, were also sometimes used as euphemisms for the penis.
And one of the characters in Petronius's ''
Satyricon
The ''Satyricon'', ''Satyricon'' ''liber'' (''The Book of Satyrlike Adventures''), or ''Satyrica'', is a Latin work of fiction believed to have been written by Gaius Petronius, though the manuscript tradition identifies the author as Titus Petr ...
'', Ascyltus, is described as follows:
:
::("For he had a weight on his groins so big that you'd think the man himself was just an appendage of his phallus.")
or
Yet another euphemism is or or , which literally means the stem or stalk of a plant (such as a cabbage, onion, or vine). This word was used by the satirist
Lucilius
The gens Lucilia was a plebeian family at ancient Rome. The most famous member of this gens was the poet Gaius Lucilius, who flourished during the latter part of the second century BC.''Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology'', vo ...
and by the medical writer
Celsus
Celsus (; grc-x-hellen, Κέλσος, ''Kélsos''; ) was a 2nd-century Greek philosopher and opponent of early Christianity. His literary work, ''The True Word'' (also ''Account'', ''Doctrine'' or ''Discourse''; Greek: grc-x-hellen, Λόγ ...
(6.18.2).
In the same passage (6.18.2), Celsus refers to the foreskin as "skin", and to the glans as "acorn". Martial also uses the word in an obscene pun (12.75.3):
:
::("Secundus has buttocks fed with acorns")
The word seems to have been
children's slang for the penis; compare
English
English usually refers to:
* English language
* English people
English may also refer to:
Peoples, culture, and language
* ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England
** English national ide ...
''pee-pee''. It appears in Martial 11.71:
:
:: ("Natta sucks the pee-pee of his athlete,
compared to whom,
Priapus is a
eunuch
A eunuch ( ) is a male who has been castrated. Throughout history, castration often served a specific social function.
The earliest records for intentional castration to produce eunuchs are from the Sumerian city of Lagash in the 2nd millenni ...
.")
For , see on above. was an emasculated member of the cult of
Cybele
Cybele ( ; Phrygian language, Phrygian: ''Matar Kubileya/Kubeleya'' "Kubileya/Kubeleya Mother", perhaps "Mountain Mother"; Lydian language, Lydian ''Kuvava''; el, Κυβέλη ''Kybele'', ''Kybebe'', ''Kybelis'') is an Anatolian mother godde ...
; according to Taylor (1997), they had much in common with the
''hijras'' of India today.
The penis was compared to a throat or neck in these lines of Martial (9.27.1–2), which mock a philosopher who has plucked the hairs from his private parts with tweezers ():
:
:: ("when you carry around depilated balls, Chrestus,
and a dick just like a vulture's neck")
Similarly
Persius
Aulus Persius Flaccus (; 4 December 3424 November 62 AD) was a Roman poet and satirist of Etruscan origin. In his works, poems and satires, he shows a Stoic wisdom and a strong criticism for what he considered to be the stylistic abuses of his ...
in his 4th satire refers to the penis as "neck, gullet". In the following lines he imagines young
Alcibiades (or an Alcibiades-like youth) sunbathing in a public bath and comments on the fact that though he now has a full beard on his chin he still "weeds" all the hairs out of his private parts:
:
::("But if after being oiled you take a rest and fix the sun on your skin,
near you there is a stranger to nudge you will his elbow and spit scornfully:
'What morals! To weed one's penis and the secret parts of one's loins
and to display a withered to the public!
And when you comb a
balsamed rug on your jaw,
why does a shorn stick out from your groin?
Even though five gym-attendants pluck at that vegetation
and make your boiled buttocks smooth with their curved tweezers,
yet that "bracken" of yours can't be tamed by any plough.' ")
That here means "throat" or "gullet" is supported by a
scholiast
Scholia (singular scholium or scholion, from grc, σχόλιον, "comment, interpretation") are grammatical, critical, or explanatory comments – original or copied from prior commentaries – which are inserted in the margin of t ...
(early commentator). However, Adams, the expert on Roman sexual vocabulary, prefers the idea that this word is also a by-form of , a grain weevil. Another scholar Wehrle, pointing to the horticultural imagery, thinks the metaphor refers to the larva of a weevil.
![Mercury god](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/76/Mercury_god.jpg)
The obscure word (
gen. ) seems to have meant a sexualized caricature with an abnormally large penis, such as the Romans were known to draw. It appears in Catullus 37:
:
::("I will graffiti the front of the tavern with s")
and in a graffito from Pompeii:
:
::("may you guys eat shit, whoever you are who drew sopios!'")
The grammarian Sacerdos preserves a quotation about
Pompey
Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus (; 29 September 106 BC – 28 September 48 BC), known in English as Pompey or Pompey the Great, was a leading Roman general and statesman. He played a significant role in the transformation of ...
, that says ("whoever is not ashamed, and does not blush, is not a man, but a .") would appear to describe drawings such as that of the god
Mercury in the illustration.
Erection
The verb meant "to have an erection".
Martial (6.36) in one epigram teases a certain friend:
:
::("Your cock is as big as your nose is long, Papylus, so that you can smell it whenever you get an erection.")
Suetonius's ''
Lives of the Twelve Caesars
''De vita Caesarum'' (Latin; "About the Life of the Caesars"), commonly known as ''The Twelve Caesars'', is a set of twelve biographies of Julius Caesar and the first 11 emperors of the Roman Empire written by Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus. The gr ...
'', quotes a letter from
Mark Antony
Marcus Antonius (14 January 1 August 30 BC), commonly known in English as Mark Antony, was a Roman politician and general who played a critical role in the transformation of the Roman Republic from a constitutional republic into the au ...
to
Augustus
Caesar Augustus (born Gaius Octavius; 23 September 63 BC – 19 August AD 14), also known as Octavian, was the first Roman emperor; he reigned from 27 BC until his death in AD 14. He is known for being the founder of the Roman Pr ...
which contains the sentence:
:
:: ("Does it make any difference where or in which woman you get hard?")
The participle means 'erect'. Martial describes the habit of a certain girl of weighing a lover's penis in her hand (10.55.1):
:
:
:: ("Whenever Marulla weighs an erect penis in her fingers...")
Martial uses the word ("a hard one") alone to refer to a penis in the following line, mocking a certain Greek philosopher who despite his beard was effeminate (9.47.6):
:
:: ("You enjoy having a hard one in your soft backside")
Another word for "erect" was ("stretched, extended").
Priapus is addressed as in ''Priāpeia'' 81, and as being ("heavy with an extended phallus") in ''Priāpeia'' 79.
An "erection" or "impatience to have sex" was .
Horace (''Sat.'' 1.2.116-8) writes:
:...
::("When your groin swells up, then if
a slave girl or home-reared slave boy is available, on whom you can mount an attack
straightaway, do you prefer to burst with the erection?")
Similarly in
Priapeia
The ''Priapeia'' (or ''Carmina Priapea'') is a collection of eighty (in some editions ninety-five) anonymous short Latin poems in various meters on subjects pertaining to the phallic god Priapus. They are believed to date from the 1st century AD ...
33.5, the god Priapus says:
:
::("Shameful indeed to do, but so that I don't burst with desire,
I shall put down my sickle and my hand will become my girlfriend.")
An adjective to describe a penis which refused to become erect was . Ovid (''Amōrēs'' 3.7.65-6):
:
::("But my members lay there as if prematurely dead,
shamefully, more languid than yesterday's rose.")
And a girlfriend of Horace's chides him with the words (''Epodes'' 12):
:
::("You are less languid with Inachia than with me!")
While Catullus (67.23) speaks of an impotent husband in these terms:
:
::("whose little dagger, hanging more flaccid than a tender beet (a vegetable)
never raised itself to the middle of his tunic")
In the Romance languages
has evolved into Sicilian and Italian and
South Sardinian . also exists in
Spanish
Spanish might refer to:
* Items from or related to Spain:
**Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain
**Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries
**Spanish cuisine
Other places
* Spanish, Ontario, Can ...
. is preserved in some Romance dialects, usually with another meaning; is a sort of stirrup and spur in a
Calabrian dialect, possibly named for its shape. Most Romance languages have adopted metaphorical euphemisms as the chief words for the penis; as in
Spanish
Spanish might refer to:
* Items from or related to Spain:
**Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain
**Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries
**Spanish cuisine
Other places
* Spanish, Ontario, Can ...
,
Portuguese
Portuguese may refer to:
* anything of, from, or related to the country and nation of Portugal
** Portuguese cuisine, traditional foods
** Portuguese language, a Romance language
*** Portuguese dialects, variants of the Portuguese language
** Portu ...
and
Italian
Italian(s) may refer to:
* Anything of, from, or related to the people of Italy over the centuries
** Italians, an ethnic group or simply a citizen of the Italian Republic or Italian Kingdom
** Italian language, a Romance language
*** Regional Ita ...
, obscene for penis, and in
Romanian
Romanian may refer to:
*anything of, from, or related to the country and nation of Romania
**Romanians, an ethnic group
**Romanian language, a Romance language
*** Romanian dialects, variants of the Romanian language
** Romanian cuisine, tradition ...
(although is far more common), in
Catalan
Catalan may refer to:
Catalonia
From, or related to Catalonia:
* Catalan language, a Romance language
* Catalans, an ethnic group formed by the people from, or with origins in, Northern or southern Catalonia
Places
* 13178 Catalan, asteroid #1 ...
and
French , from Latin , "staff", and French ("tail"), from Latin "tail". The Portuguese "penis", first attested in the 10th century, is thought to derive from a Vulgar Latin word "a little stake". The Italian has no obvious Latin ancestor. A number of different suggestions have been made for its origin, but none has yet gained general acceptance.
: the testicles
The basic word for the
testicle
A testicle or testis (plural testes) is the male reproductive gland or gonad in all bilaterians, including humans. It is homologous to the female ovary. The functions of the testes are to produce both sperm and androgens, primarily testoste ...
s in Latin was (singular: ). It appears to have had an alternative form * (singular: ), from which the Spanish and other Romance forms are derived. (One late Latin source has the spelling ).
Etymology
The etymology of is obscure. Tucker, without explanation, gives *''qogh-sleǐ-os'' (*''k
wog
h-sley-os?''), and relates it to ''cohum'', an obscure word for "yoke".
Lewis and Short's ''Latin Dictionary'' relates the word to ("a leather sack for liquids"). However, this etymology is not generally accepted today, and according to the the etymology is unknown. In texts, the word for testicles is always spelled with ''col-'' not ''cull-'', and is plural.
Usage
Cicero in his letter discussing obscene Latin words (''ad Fam.'' 9.22) says at one point ("Lanuvian are respectable, but "Cliternian" ones are indecent"). (
Lanuvium
Lanuvium, modern Lanuvio, is an ancient city of Latium vetus, some southeast of Rome, a little southwest of the Via Appia.
Situated on an isolated hill projecting south from the main mass of the Alban Hills, Lanuvium commanded an extensive vie ...
and
Cliternia were small towns not far from Rome.) However, the meaning of these phrases is not known, according to the .
The word occurs in
Petronius (44):
:
::("if we had any balls (i.e. if we were real men), he wouldn't be so pleased with himself!")
A
Pompeian graffito quotes a line of iambic verse:
:
::("When an old man lies down, his testicles cover his butthole.")
The form of the line is reminiscent of the proverbial sayings of
Publilius Syrus
__NOTOC__
Publilius Syrus (fl. 85–43 BC), was a Latin writer, best known for his sententiae. He was a Syrian from Antioch who was brought as a slave to Roman Italy. Syrus was brought to Rome on the same ship that brought a certain Manilius, a ...
, many of which employ the same metre.
Synonyms and metaphors
The more decent word in Latin for testicles was (sing. ). This word may have derived from the Latin for "witnesses". Cicero's letter says ("In a court of law, ''witnesses'' is a quite decent word; not too much so elsewhere.") Katz (1998) draws attention to the fact that in some cultures it was customary to take a solemn oath while laying hands on the testicles either of a living person (as in Genesis 24:2-4; 47:29-31), or of a sacrificed animal (as described in Demosthenes 23.67f); a similar ritual took place in Umbria when dedicating a sacrificial animal. According to Katz, the word itself appears to be derived from the root ''trityo-'' ("third") and originally meant a third party.
The two meanings of open the door for puns such as the following from Martial (2.72):
:
::("What about the fact that Caecilius has witnesses/testicles, Postumus?")
Or Cicero's ("outstanding witnesses!") in his amusing account of two witnesses hiding naked in a public bathhouse.
The diminutive was entirely confined to the anatomical sense; it is used 33 times by the medical writer
Celsus
Celsus (; grc-x-hellen, Κέλσος, ''Kélsos''; ) was a 2nd-century Greek philosopher and opponent of early Christianity. His literary work, ''The True Word'' (also ''Account'', ''Doctrine'' or ''Discourse''; Greek: grc-x-hellen, Λόγ ...
, but not at all. The satirists Persius and Juvenal also used the word . Veterinary writers use both and .
In Catullus (63.5), the testicles are famously referred to as ("weights"), perhaps a metaphor of the weights hung on threads of a loom. The exact words of the text here are disputed, but the general sense is clear:
:
::("He tore off the weights of his groin with a sharp flint")
Ovid ( 2.241) recounting the same story, and perhaps implying that Attis removed the whole organ, similarly uses the phrase ("the burden of his groin").
Other euphemisms are used in other writers. Ovid (''Amōrēs'' 2.3) uses the phrase :
:
::("He who first cut off the genital parts of boys
ought himself to have suffered the wounds which he made.")
In the Romance languages
is productive in most of the Romance languages: cf.
Italian
Italian(s) may refer to:
* Anything of, from, or related to the people of Italy over the centuries
** Italians, an ethnic group or simply a citizen of the Italian Republic or Italian Kingdom
** Italian language, a Romance language
*** Regional Ita ...
,
French ;
Portuguese
Portuguese may refer to:
* anything of, from, or related to the country and nation of Portugal
** Portuguese cuisine, traditional foods
** Portuguese language, a Romance language
*** Portuguese dialects, variants of the Portuguese language
** Portu ...
,
Galician ,
Catalan
Catalan may refer to:
Catalonia
From, or related to Catalonia:
* Catalan language, a Romance language
* Catalans, an ethnic group formed by the people from, or with origins in, Northern or southern Catalonia
Places
* 13178 Catalan, asteroid #1 ...
,
Sardinian ,
Romanian
Romanian may refer to:
*anything of, from, or related to the country and nation of Romania
**Romanians, an ethnic group
**Romanian language, a Romance language
*** Romanian dialects, variants of the Romanian language
** Romanian cuisine, tradition ...
,
Spanish
Spanish might refer to:
* Items from or related to Spain:
**Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain
**Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries
**Spanish cuisine
Other places
* Spanish, Ontario, Can ...
(now a
loanword
A loanword (also loan word or loan-word) is a word at least partly assimilated from one language (the donor language) into another language. This is in contrast to cognates, which are words in two or more languages that are similar because t ...
in
English
English usually refers to:
* English language
* English people
English may also refer to:
Peoples, culture, and language
* ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England
** English national ide ...
).
''Cunnus'': the vulva
was the basic Latin word for the
vulva
The vulva (plural: vulvas or vulvae; derived from Latin for wrapper or covering) consists of the external female sex organs. The vulva includes the mons pubis (or mons veneris), labia majora, labia minora, clitoris, vestibular bulbs, vulv ...
. The ''Priapeia'' mention it in connection with , above.
Etymology
has a distinguished Indo-European lineage. It is
cognate with Persian "anus" and "vulva", and with
Greek
Greek may refer to:
Greece
Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe:
*Greeks, an ethnic group.
*Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family.
**Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...
(''kusthos''). Tucker and de Vaan derive it from an Indo-European ''*kut-nos'' akin to Welsh 'bag, scrotum'. Despite its similarity to "
cunt", the ''
Oxford English Dictionary
The ''Oxford English Dictionary'' (''OED'') is the first and foundational historical dictionary of the English language, published by Oxford University Press (OUP). It traces the historical development of the English language, providing a co ...
'' cautions that the two words may have developed from different roots.
Usage
Cicero's §154 confirms its obscene status. Cicero writes:
:
:: ("We say ("with them"), but we don't say
with us'
With or WITH may refer to:
* With, a preposition in English
* Carl Johannes With (1877–1923), Danish doctor and arachnologist
* With (character), a character in ''D. N. Angel''
* ''With'' (novel), a novel by Donald Harrington
* ''With'' (albu ...
but rather ; because if we said it like that, the letters would run together in a rather obscene way.")
Because the /m/ of assimilates to the /n/ of , sounds very similar to , meaning "in/from/with a cunt twice". A similar euphemism occurs in French: the avoidance of , homophone to (cunt), by the insertion of a superfluous letter: .
Horace, however, uses the word in his Satires () at 1.2.70, and again at 1.3.105:
:
:: ("For even before
Helen
Helen may refer to:
People
* Helen of Troy, in Greek mythology, the most beautiful woman in the world
* Helen (actress) (born 1938), Indian actress
* Helen (given name), a given name (including a list of people with the name)
Places
* Helen, ...
, the cunt was a most loathsome cause of war")
Martial also uses it freely, for example (3.87):
:
::("Rumour has it, Chione, that you have never been fucked
and that there is nothing purer than your cunt.
However, you go to the baths without covering the part you should;
if you have any modesty, transfer your loincloth to your face!")
The following obscene poetic graffito from Pompeii is written in the
trochaic septenarius In ancient Greek and Latin literature, the trochaic septenarius or trochaic tetrameter catalectic is one of two major forms of poetic metre based on the trochee as its dominant rhythmic unit, the other being much rarer trochaic octonarius. It is use ...
metre:
:
::("A hairy cunt is fucked much better than a smooth one:
at the same time it retains the heat and at the same time it brushes the cock")
The word occurs in literary Latin, most frequently in Martial; it denotes the person who performs the action, not the action itself as in modern English, where it is not obscene but technical. The term comes from the Latin word for the vulva () and the verb "to lick" (, cf. "tongue").
Synonyms and metaphors
These include , "indentation", and , "ditch"; also or "pot".
The modern scientific or polite words ''vulva'' and ''vagina'' both stem from Latin, but originally they had different meanings. The word is the Latin word for scabbard or sword-sheath.
(or ) in classical Latin generally signified the womb, especially in medical writing, and also it is also common in the
Vetus Latina
''Vetus Latina'' ("Old Latin" in Latin), also known as ''Vetus Itala'' ("Old Italian"), ''Itala'' ("Italian") and Old Italic, and denoted by the siglum \mathfrak, is the collective name given to the Latin translations of biblical texts (bot ...
(pre-Jerome) version of the Bible. The meanings of and have changed by means of
metaphor
A metaphor is a figure of speech that, for rhetorical effect, directly refers to one thing by mentioning another. It may provide (or obscure) clarity or identify hidden similarities between two different ideas. Metaphors are often compared wi ...
and
metonymy, respectively. Other words for the womb are , (in later Latin), ("belly"), and (also "belly"). At Juvenal 6.129, however, the word is used of the vagina or clitoris of the (allegedly) nymphomaniac empress
Messalina
Valeria Messalina (; ) was the third wife of Roman emperor Claudius. She was a paternal cousin of Emperor Nero, a second cousin of Emperor Caligula, and a great-grandniece of Emperor Augustus. A powerful and influential woman with a reputatio ...
, who is described as departing from a session in a brothel:
:
::("still burning with the excitement of her rigid 'volva',
tired out by men but still not satisfied, she departs")
In the Romance languages
is preserved in almost every Romance language: e.g. French , Catalan , Spanish ,
Galician ,
Portuguese
Portuguese may refer to:
* anything of, from, or related to the country and nation of Portugal
** Portuguese cuisine, traditional foods
** Portuguese language, a Romance language
*** Portuguese dialects, variants of the Portuguese language
** Portu ...
,
(South) Sardinian ,
Old Italian
Italian (''italiano'' or ) is a Romance language of the Indo-European language family that evolved from the Vulgar Latin of the Roman Empire. Together with Sardinian, Italian is the least divergent language from Latin. Spoken by about 85 m ...
. In
Calabrian dialect The primary languages of Calabria are the Italian language as well as regional varieties of the Neapolitan and Extreme Southern Italian, all collectively known as Calabrian ( it, calabrese, link=no). In addition, there are 100,000 speakers of the ...
s the forms (m.) and (f.) are used as synonyms of "stupid, dumb"; the same is true of the French and in fact this has become the primary meaning of the words, both eclipsing the genital sense and significantly reducing the word's obscenity. In Portuguese it has been transferred to the feminine
gender
Gender is the range of characteristics pertaining to femininity and masculinity and differentiating between them. Depending on the context, this may include sex-based social structures (i.e. gender roles) and gender identity. Most cultures ...
; the form is also attested in Pompeian graffiti and in some late Latin texts.
: the clitoris
The ancient Romans had medical knowledge of the
clitoris, and their native word for it was . This appears to have been one of the most obscene words in the entire Latin lexicon. It is alluded to, but does not appear, in literary sources, except in the ''
Priapeia
The ''Priapeia'' (or ''Carmina Priapea'') is a collection of eighty (in some editions ninety-five) anonymous short Latin poems in various meters on subjects pertaining to the phallic god Priapus. They are believed to date from the 1st century AD ...
'' 79, which calls it , the "poor little clitoris". It does, however, appear in graffiti.
Usage
Not even the poets Catullus and Martial, whose frankness is notorious, ever refer to ''landīca''. In a letter to a friend,
Cicero
Marcus Tullius Cicero ( ; ; 3 January 106 BC – 7 December 43 BC) was a Roman statesman, lawyer, scholar, philosopher, and academic skeptic, who tried to uphold optimate principles during the political crises that led to the esta ...
discusses which words in Latin are potentially obscene or subject to obscene
pun
A pun, also known as paronomasia, is a form of word play that exploits multiple meanings of a term, or of similar-sounding words, for an intended humorous or rhetorical effect. These ambiguities can arise from the intentional use of homophoni ...
ning, and there hints at the word by quoting an unintentionally obscene utterance made in the
Senate:
:
:: "shall I say that this or that was the greater fault?"
with echoing the forbidden word. Note that the "m" at the end of was pronounced like "n" before the following "d."
The word is found in Roman graffiti: ("I seek
Fulvia
Fulvia (; c. 83 BC – 40 BC) was an aristocratic Roman woman who lived during the Late Roman Republic. Fulvia's birth into an important political dynasty facilitated her relationships and, later on, marriages to Publius Clodius Pulcher, Gai ...
's clitoris") appears on a leaden projectile found at
Perugia
Perugia (, , ; lat, Perusia) is the capital city of Umbria in central Italy, crossed by the River Tiber, and of the province of Perugia.
The city is located about north of Rome and southeast of Florence. It covers a high hilltop and pa ...
left over from the
Perusine War
The Perusine War (also Perusian or Perusinian War, or the War of Perusia) was a civil war of the Roman Republic, which lasted from 41 to 40 BC. It was fought by Lucius Antonius and Fulvia to support Mark Antony against his political enemy Octav ...
, while a derivative word is found in Pompeii: ("Euplia (is) loose and has a large clitoris").
It also occurs in ''
Priapeia
The ''Priapeia'' (or ''Carmina Priapea'') is a collection of eighty (in some editions ninety-five) anonymous short Latin poems in various meters on subjects pertaining to the phallic god Priapus. They are believed to date from the 1st century AD ...
'' 78.5 (in some versions 79.5), where a girl who has received the attentions of a is described as suffering from ("cracks in her clitoris").
:
:: ("But may the gods and goddesses deny your teeth any food, you who licked the cunt of my neighbouring girlfriend, because of whom this brave girl who has never told a lie, and who used to come running quickly to me, now, poor thing, swears she can hardly walk because of the grooves in her clitoris.")
The word also occurs twice in a medical context in a 5th-6th century Latin translation of
Soranus of Ephesus
Soranus of Ephesus ( grc-gre, Σωρανός ὁ Ἑφέσιος; 1st/2nd century AD) was a Greek physician. He was born in Ephesus but practiced in Alexandria and subsequently in Rome, and was one of the chief representatives of the Methodic ...
's book on gynaecology.
Fay (1907) suggests one possible etymology as ("a little gland").
Synonyms and metaphors
Martial's epigram 1.90 alludes to a woman who uses her clitoris as a penis in a
lesbian encounter, referring to it as her "prodigious
Venus
Venus is the second planet from the Sun. It is sometimes called Earth's "sister" or "twin" planet as it is almost as large and has a similar composition. As an interior planet to Earth, Venus (like Mercury) appears in Earth's sky never f ...
":
:
:: ("You dare to rub two cunts together
and your prodigious Venus pretends to be a man.")
In the
Satires of Juvenal
The ''Satires'' () are a collection of satirical poems by the Latin author Juvenal written between the end of the first and the early second centuries A.D.
Juvenal is credited with sixteen known poems divided among five books; all are in the ...
it is referred to euphemistically as a ''crista'', "crest" in this line (6.420), describing a lady's massage after an exercise session:
:
:: ("And the cunning masseur presses his fingers on her 'crest'
and causes the top of his mistress's thigh to cry aloud")
In the Romance languages
survived in Old French ''landie'' (extremely rare), and in
Romanian
Romanian may refer to:
*anything of, from, or related to the country and nation of Romania
**Romanians, an ethnic group
**Romanian language, a Romance language
*** Romanian dialects, variants of the Romanian language
** Romanian cuisine, tradition ...
lindic'.
: the anus
The basic Latin word for the anus was . Though not very common, it occurs in both Catullus and Martial, and is productive in Romance. The word is of uncertain etymology, according to Adams.
Usage
In the texts appears to be used mainly of humans. It was associated with both defecation and with sex. Catullus (23) mocks a certain Furius with these words:
:
::("Because your arsehole is purer than a salt-cellar
and you don't shit even ten times in a whole year,
and the shit is harder than beans and pebbles;
which, if you were to rub it and crumble it with your hands,
you could never dirty your finger")
Martial (2.51) mocks a passive homosexual in these terms:
:
::("Though you often have only one
denarius
The denarius (, dēnāriī ) was the standard Roman silver coin from its introduction in the Second Punic War to the reign of Gordian III (AD 238–244), when it was gradually replaced by the antoninianus. It continued to be minted in very ...
in your whole money-chest,
Hyllus, and that rubbed smoother than your arsehole,
yet it's not the baker, nor the innkeeper, who will take that away from you,
but anyone who is proud of his over-sized penis.
Your unlucky stomach looks at the banquets of your arsehole,
and the former is always hungry, poor thing, while the latter devours.")
In a verse fable of
Phaedrus, the word is used of dogs:
:
::("Whenever (a dog) sees a new one coming, he smells its anus.")
The word was synonymous with , "arsehole". This word is thought to be an o-stem version of the same root as "to fart", identifying it as the source of flatulence. Lewis and Short's Dictionary cites only two instances. In an unattractive picture of an old woman Horace (''Epodes'' 8.6) writes:
:
::("And (when) there gapes between your wrinkled buttocks
an ugly arsehole like that of a cow with diarrhoea.")
Juvenal (2.12), writing of outwardly virile but in practice effeminate philosophers, writes:
:
::("Your hairy limbs and the tough bristles along your arms
promise a stern spirit, it's true, but from your smooth arsehole
swollen figs (i.e.
piles) are cut out as the doctor laughs.")
The implication is that the piles have been caused by anal sex; that such anal piles or sores are caused by sex is a common theme in the poems of Martial.
Martial uses both and synonymously in the following poem (6.37):
:
::("Of his arsehole cut open right up to his navel
Charimus has no trace left;
and yet he itches right up to his navel.
O, under what great urges the poor man labours!
He has no anus, and yet he's still a fag!")
seems to have been rather a rarer word than . It is not used by Catullus, and only twice by Martial. It is not found in Pompeii, and did not produce derivatives in vulgar Latin or in the Romance languages. The fact that it is used once by Juvenal (who avoided obscene vocabulary) shows that it was less offensive than . In later medical Latin, such as the 5th century
Cassius Felix Cassius Felix (), also Cassius Felix of Cirta, was a Roman African medical writer probably native of Constantina. He is known for having written in AD 447 a Latin treatise titled ''De Medicina''. The little we can say of the author comes from his ...
, it could be used as an alternative for .
(not to be confused with "an old woman") corresponds to the English derivative "anus". The word is metaphorical and originally meant "ring". Its anatomical sense drove out its other meanings, and for this reason the diminutive became the usual Latin name for a ring or circle.
The word is common in medical writings. In his book on agriculture,
Columella
Lucius Junius Moderatus Columella (; Arabic: , 4 – ) was a prominent writer on agriculture in the Roman Empire.
His ' in twelve volumes has been completely preserved and forms an important source on Roman agriculture, together with the wo ...
describes how to treat a cow with stomach-ache:
:
::("If any pain remains, trim your nails, insert your oiled hand through its anus and extract the dung.")
It does not seem to have been regarded as an obscenity, and in his letter on different Latin obscene words, Cicero says:
:
::("You call an 'anus' by a name not its own; why not use its own name? If it is something obscene, it should not be referred to even by another name; if it is not, it should be called by its own name.")
In the Latin Bible, the word is used for "haemorrhoids":
:
::("You shall make five golden haemorrhoids.")
In
Phaedrus's fable of the dogs who are sent on an embassy to Jupiter, it is used as a synonym of , which occurs later in the same poem:
:
::("Fearing lest something similar might happen again,
they fill the dogs' anus with perfume, and a lot of it.")
An example of the usage of "ring" as a metaphor in a modern
Romance language
The Romance languages, sometimes referred to as Latin languages or Neo-Latin languages, are the various modern languages that evolved from Vulgar Latin. They are the only extant subgroup of the Italic languages in the Indo-European language f ...
can be found in
Brazilian Portuguese
Brazilian Portuguese (' ), also Portuguese of Brazil (', ) or South American Portuguese (') is the set of varieties of the Portuguese language native to Brazil and the most influential form of Portuguese worldwide. It is spoken by almost all of ...
slang, in which the word ''anel'' can have the same double meaning, especially in the expression ''o anel de couro'' (the leather ring). "Ring" is also British slang for "anus".
Buttocks
A more seemly Latin word for the backside was (singular ) "buttocks"; this word was generally more decent than , and older, as well: it has several Indo-European cognates. It can be used for the rump of animals as well as humans, and even birds. The word is usually plural but sometimes singular. In the same satire quoted above Juvenal (2.20–21) speaks scathingly of philosophers who have double standards, preaching about virtue but practising vice:
:
::("They speak of virtue
but waggle their rump. 'Am I going to respect you, Sextus, when you behave in such a camp way?'")
Another word for buttocks, slightly less common, was ''natēs'', which is generally used only of the buttocks of humans. It seems to have been a more vulgar or colloquial word than ''clūnēs''. In one of the
Priapeia
The ''Priapeia'' (or ''Carmina Priapea'') is a collection of eighty (in some editions ninety-five) anonymous short Latin poems in various meters on subjects pertaining to the phallic god Priapus. They are believed to date from the 1st century AD ...
epigrams (22, in some editions 21) the god Priapus threatens potential thieves with punishment as follows:
:
::("If any woman steals (from my garden) or a man or a boy,
the first must provide her cunt, the second his head, the third his buttocks.")
In the Romance languages
has been preserved as meaning the buttocks (rather than the anus) in most Romance languages except for Portuguese, which kept the original semantics. It yields the forms ''culo'' in Spanish and Italian; in French and Catalan it becomes ''cul'', in
Romanian
Romanian may refer to:
*anything of, from, or related to the country and nation of Romania
**Romanians, an ethnic group
**Romanian language, a Romance language
*** Romanian dialects, variants of the Romanian language
** Romanian cuisine, tradition ...
''cur'', in Vegliot
Dalmatian ''čol'', in Sardinian and Sicilian ''culu'', in Portuguese ''cu'' and in Galician ''cu''. Its offensiveness varies from one language to another; in French it was incorporated into ordinary words and expressions such as ''
culottes
Culottes are an item of clothing worn on the lower half of the body. The term can refer to either split skirts, historical men's breeches, or women's under-pants; this is an example of fashion-industry words taken from designs across history, l ...
'', "
breeches
Breeches ( ) are an article of clothing covering the body from the waist down, with separate coverings for each leg, usually stopping just below the knee, though in some cases reaching to the ankles. Formerly a standard item of Western men's c ...
", and ''cul-de-sac''.
: to fuck
![Sexual scene on pompeian mural 2](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e9/Sexual_scene_on_pompeian_mural_2.jpg)
,
infinitive
Infinitive (abbreviated ) is a linguistics term for certain verb forms existing in many languages, most often used as non-finite verbs. As with many linguistic concepts, there is not a single definition applicable to all languages. The word is deri ...
,
perfect ,
supine
In grammar, a supine is a form of verbal noun used in some languages. The term is most often used for Latin, where it is one of the four principal parts of a verb. The word refers to a position of lying on one's back (as opposed to ' prone', l ...
, Latin for "to fuck", is richly attested and useful.
The etymology of is "obscure". It may be related to "repel, rebut" and , "suppress" or "beat down", and come from a root meaning "beat".
is richly attested in all its forms in Latin literature. In one poem (10.81.1) Martial writes, using the supine:
:
::("When two men came one morning to Phyllis for a fuck...")
Not only the word itself, but also derived words such as , "fucked out, exhausted from sex" (
Catullus
Gaius Valerius Catullus (; 84 - 54 BCE), often referred to simply as Catullus (, ), was a Latin poet of the late Roman Republic who wrote chiefly in the neoteric style of poetry, focusing on personal life rather than classical heroes. His ...
41), (Catullus 29, same meaning), and "to have sex with" (Catullus 37) are attested in Classical Latin literature. The derived noun , "act of intercourse", also exists in Classical Latin, and the , which corresponds to the English epithet "fucker", but lacking the derogatory tone of the English word. The god Priapus says in one poem (''Priapeia'' 63):
:
::("To this (p....) of mine, a girl – I almost added the name –
is accustomed to come with her boyfriend")
It is also used metaphorically in
Catullus 6, which speaks of , funds exhausted, literally "fucked away".
, unlike the English word "fuck", was more frequently used in erotic and celebratory senses rather than derogatory ones or insults. A woman of Pompeii wrote the graffito ("I got laid here") and
prostitutes
Prostitution is the business or practice of engaging in sexual activity in exchange for payment. The definition of "sexual activity" varies, and is often defined as an activity requiring physical contact (e.g., sexual intercourse, non-penet ...
, canny at
marketing
Marketing is the process of exploring, creating, and delivering value to meet the needs of a target market in terms of goods and services; potentially including selection of a target audience; selection of certain attributes or themes to emph ...
, appear to have written other graffiti complimenting their customers for their sexual prowess:
:
::("Lucky boy, you fuck well");
:
::("Victorious, best wishes to one who fucks well").
It is famously used in
Catullus 32:
:
:: ("but you remain at home and prepare for us
nine acts of fucking, one after the other.")
in its
active voice
Active voice is a grammatical voice common in many of the world's languages. It is the unmarked voice for clauses featuring a transitive verb in nominative–accusative languages, including English and most other Indo-European languages. A ...
was used of women only when it was imagined that they were taking the active role thought appropriate to the male partner by the Romans. The woman in Martial 7.70 is described as a , a lesbian.
:
:: ("Lesbian of all lesbians, Philaenis,
you are right to call the woman you fuck, your 'girlfriend'.")
Other more neutral synonyms for in Latin include , literally "to enter", as in this sentence from
Suetonius, supposedly from a letter written by
Mark Antony
Marcus Antonius (14 January 1 August 30 BC), commonly known in English as Mark Antony, was a Roman politician and general who played a critical role in the transformation of the Roman Republic from a constitutional republic into the au ...
(lover of Queen
Cleopatra) to his brother-in-law Octavian (later to become the Emperor
Augustus
Caesar Augustus (born Gaius Octavius; 23 September 63 BC – 19 August AD 14), also known as Octavian, was the first Roman emperor; he reigned from 27 BC until his death in AD 14. He is known for being the founder of the Roman Pr ...
):
:
:: ("What has changed you? Is it because I'm sleeping with the queen? ... So is Drusilla the only woman you sleep with?")
The word , literally "to go with," whence Latin and English ''
coitus
Sexual intercourse (or coitus or copulation) is a sexual activity typically involving the insertion and thrusting of the penis into the vagina for sexual pleasure or reproduction.Sexual intercourse most commonly means penile–vaginal penetr ...
'', is also used euphemistically for sexual intercourse, but it is not exactly a synonym for . It can be used for both men and women, and also of animals and birds.
Another word found on Pompeian inscriptions was , which appears to be a borrowing from the Greek () "loosen". A Pompeian inscription says ("Dionysius is allowed to fuck whenever he wants to"). The Latin word appears to be used in the same sense in ''Priapeia'' 31: ("these weapons of my belly will relax you" (of ).
Adams (1982) lists a large number of other euphemisms for the sexual act, such as this one from Juvenal (6.126):
:
::("And lying on her back she absorbed the blows of all and sundry")
In the Romance languages
, a core item of the lexicon, lives on in most of the Romance languages, sometimes with its sense somewhat weakened: Catalan ''fotre'', French ''foutre'', Spanish ''joder'', Portuguese ''foder'', Galician ''foder'',
Romanian
Romanian may refer to:
*anything of, from, or related to the country and nation of Romania
**Romanians, an ethnic group
**Romanian language, a Romance language
*** Romanian dialects, variants of the Romanian language
** Romanian cuisine, tradition ...
''fute'' (''futere''), Italian ''fottere''. A famous ribald song in
Old Occitan
Old Occitan ( oc, occitan ancian, label= Modern Occitan, ca, occità antic), also called Old Provençal, was the earliest form of the Occitano-Romance languages, as attested in writings dating from the eighth through the fourteenth centuries. Old ...
sometimes attributed to the troubadour
William IX of Aquitaine
William IX ( oc, Guilhèm de Peitieus; ''Guilhem de Poitou'' french: Guillaume de Poitiers) (22 October 1071 – 10 February 1126), called the Troubadour, was the Duke of Aquitaine and Gascony and Count of Poitou (as William VII) between 1086 an ...
reads:
: ''Tant las fotei com auziretz:
Cen e quatre vint et ueit vetz,
Q'a pauc no-i rompei mos corretz
E mos arnes''
:: ("I fucked them as much as you will hear:
a hundred and eighty-eight times.
I most nearly broke my equipment
-- and my tool.")
: to sodomise
The aggressive sense of English "fuck" and "screw" was not strongly attached to ''futuō'' in Latin. Instead, these aggressive connotations attached themselves to ''pēdīcāre'' "to
sodomise" and "to force
fellatio
Fellatio (also known as fellation, and in slang as blowjob, BJ, giving head, or sucking off) is an oral sex act involving a person stimulating the penis of another person by using the mouth, throat, or both. Oral stimulation of the scrotu ...
" respectively, which were used with mock hostility in
Catullus 16
''Catullus 16'' or ''Carmen 16'' is a poem by Gaius Valerius Catullus (c. 84 BC – c. 54 BC). The poem, written in a hendecasyllabic (11-syllable) meter, was considered to be so sexually explicit following its rediscovery in the following centu ...
:
:
:: ("I will bugger and facefuck you,
pervert Aurelius and faggot Furius,
since you thought me indecent
because my poems are somewhat sissified.")
The passive voice, , is used of the person who is forced to submit to anal sex, as in Priapeia 35, in which the god Priapus threatens a thief:
:
::("You will be buggered, thief, on the first offence; but if
you are caught a second time, I will stick it in your mouth.")
There is some doubt in the dictionaries whether the correct spelling was ''ped-'' or ''paed-'' (Lewis and Short give the latter).
Bücheler (1915, p. 105) argues that ''ped-'' is correct on the basis of the following epigram in the ''
Priapeia
The ''Priapeia'' (or ''Carmina Priapea'') is a collection of eighty (in some editions ninety-five) anonymous short Latin poems in various meters on subjects pertaining to the phallic god Priapus. They are believed to date from the 1st century AD ...
'' (no. 67):
:
::("Let the first syllable of 'Penelope' be followed by the first of 'Dido',
and the first of 'Cadmus' by the first of 'Remus',
and what comes out of them is what you will pay to me if you are caught in the garden,
thief; it is with this penalty you must pay for your crime.")
and (noun)
The word ("buggerer") is used in a poem by Catullus's friend the orator
Licinius Calvus quoted by Suetonius (''Caesar'' 49), in which the King of
Bithynia is referred to as ("the buggerer of Caesar"), referring to a rumour that in his youth
Julius Caesar
Gaius Julius Caesar (; ; 12 July 100 BC – 15 March 44 BC), was a Roman general and statesman. A member of the First Triumvirate, Caesar led the Roman armies in the Gallic Wars before defeating his political rival Pompey in a civil war, ...
had had an affair with king
Nicomedes.
Martial on the other hand preferred to use the shorter form or , of the same meaning, for example at 11.87:
:
:: ("Once you were rich; but in those days you were a ''pēdīco'',
and for a long time no woman was known to you.
Now you chase after old women. O the things that poverty forces one to do!
That woman is making a fucker out of you, Charidemus!")
The activities of a are hinted at in the following lines of Martial (12.85):
:
:: ("You say that buggerers' mouths stink.
If this is true as you say, Fabullus,
what do you think the mouth of pussy-lickers smells of?")
The various distinctions in sexual activity are made clear in the following poem of Martial (2.28):
:
:: ("Laugh a lot, Sextillus, if anyone calls you effeminate (''cinaedus''),
and show him your middle finger;
but you're also neither a buggerer (''pēdīco'') nor a fucker (''futūtor''),
nor does the hot mouth of Vetustina please you.
You're none of those, I admit, Sextillus, so what are you?
I don't know, but ''you'' know there are only two other possibilities!")
The fourth line rules out Sextillus as an ; the two remaining possibilities were in Roman eyes the most degrading, that he was either a or a .
Etymology
is often thought to be a Greek loanword in Latin (from the noun (''paidika'') "boyfriend"), but the long "i" is an obstacle. Bücheler (1915, p. 105), who rejects this etymology, suggests there may be a connection to and .
In Romance
Unlike , the word has no reflexes in Romance. The French slang word ''
pédé'' ("male homosexual") is an abbreviated form of ''pédéraste'', according to the ''
Dictionnaire historique de la langue française''.
and : oral sex
: to make suck
, which in English is denoted by the passive construction "to be sucked", is an active verb in Latin, since the was considered to be the active partner, the ''fellātor'' the passive. is the counterpart of ; in Roman terms, which are the opposite way round to modern conceptions, the giver of
oral sex
Oral sex, sometimes referred to as oral intercourse, is sexual activity involving the stimulation of the genitalia of a person by another person using the mouth (including the lips, tongue, or teeth) and the throat. Cunnilingus is oral sex p ...
inserts his penis into the mouth of the receiver.
To be forced to submit to oral sex was apparently a worse punishment than to be sodomised. Martial (2.47) advises one effeminate man who is having an adulterous affair, and who would not perhaps have objected too much if the husband punished him by sodomising him:
:
::("Do you rely on your buttocks (to avoid a worse punishment)? Your girlfriend's husband is not a sodomiser.
He does two things only: puts it in your mouth or screws women.")
According to Adams (1982, p. 126-7), it was a standard joke to speak of as a means of silencing someone. Martial (3.96) writes:
:
::("You gossip like an adulterer and a womaniser;
but if I catch you, Gargilius, you will be quiet!")
was seen as a hostile act that enemies might inflict on one. An inscription says:
:
::("I would prefer my friends to suck me than that my enemies make me suck them.")
It is also a standard threat made by the god
Priapus, protector of orchards, to potential adult male thieves, as in ''
Priapeia
The ''Priapeia'' (or ''Carmina Priapea'') is a collection of eighty (in some editions ninety-five) anonymous short Latin poems in various meters on subjects pertaining to the phallic god Priapus. They are believed to date from the 1st century AD ...
'' 13:
:
::("You will be thoroughly 'cut', boy, I warn you; girl, you will be fucked;
for the bearded thief, a third penalty awaits.")
: to suck
The word originally had an innocent sense, meaning to suck the teat or to suck milk, but in classical times the sexual sense was predominant. The verb ''fellō'' and the nouns and (less often) the feminine are common in graffiti, and the first two also occur several times in Martial's epigrams. The practice was thought particularly degrading for a man, and Martial, mocking a certain
masculine lesbian, writes (7.67):
:
::("She does not suck cocks – she thinks this not masculine enough –
but absolutely devours the middle parts of girls.")
was generally used absolutely, without an object. A Pompeian wall inscription says ("Myrtis, you suck well"), and another says ("Romula does fellatio with her boyfriend here and everywhere").
leaves little trace in Romance languages, being replaced by ("to suck") and its derivatives. Though it is not represented by descendants, it is represented by learned borrowings such as the French ''fellation''.
and : to lick
The verb ("I lick") was common in both sexual and non-sexual contexts. As a sexual term, it could have , , or as its object. Martial (3.96) writes:
:
::("You lick my girlfriend, you don't fuck her;
and you boast about it as if you were an adulterer and a fucker.
But if I catch you, Gargilius, you'll shut up!")
Its synonym was also sometimes used in a sexual sense. Martial (3.81) criticises a eunuch who presumed to have oral sex with women:
:
::("That tongue of yours ought to be licking the middle parts of men (not women)")
: to "peel"
"to take the bark off", "peel" and "to take the husk off", "to skin, flay" are famously used in a sexual sense in two places in Latin literature by Catullus and
Ausonius
Decimius Magnus Ausonius (; – c. 395) was a Roman poet and teacher of rhetoric from Burdigala in Aquitaine, modern Bordeaux, France. For a time he was tutor to the future emperor Gratian, who afterwards bestowed the consulship on him ...
. It has been argued that the meaning is to pull back a man's foreskin, in order to masturbate him. Ausonius (''Ep.'' 71), after mentioning various perversions (), says:
:
::("Crispa, however, practices all the perversions in one body:
she 'peels', she sucks, she puts it in either hole,
lest she leave anything untried before she dies.")
What seems to shock Ausonius is that Crispa actively enjoyed taking an active role in such practices rather than passively submitting to male desires as was the norm.
The other sexual use of this word is in Catullus (57), who says in a moment of bitterness:
:
::("
Caelius, our Lesbia, that Lesbia,
that one woman whom Catullus
loved more than himself and all his dear ones
now on crossroads and in alleys
'peels' the grandsons of magnanimous
Remus.")
Some, noting that in Italian the phrases ''cavar la pelle'', ''scorticare'' ("debark") can mean "strip someone of their money", and similar uses of ("to shear") and ("to skin") in Latin, have argued that Catullus is also using the word in a non-sexual sense; that is, Lesbia is acting like a prostitute and fleecing the spendthrift Roman young men () of their money.
and : to waggle
() and ( etc.) are basic Latin obscenities that have no exact English equivalents. referred to the actions of the female partner in sexual intercourse (i.e. grinding or riding on a penis); as, similarly to the case in English, , which is often translated "fuck", primarily referred to the male action (i.e. thrusting, pounding, slamming). referred to the similar activity of the passive partner in anal sex.
Etymology
Both of these verbs are of fairly obscure origin.
Unlike some of the vocabulary of homosexuality in Latin (, ), seems not to be of Greek origin. Francis A. Wood relates it to an Indo-European root *''k
weu-'' or *''qeu-'', relating to a variety of back and forth motions.
Usage
always refers to a male taking the
bottom
Bottom may refer to:
Anatomy and sex
* Bottom (BDSM), the partner in a BDSM who takes the passive, receiving, or obedient role, to that of the top or dominant
* Bottom (sex), a term used by gay couples and BDSM
* Buttocks or bottom, part of th ...
role in
anal sex. Martial 3.95 contains the phrase:
:
::("But you get buggered and you wiggle your arse so prettily, Naevolus.")
appears to have had a similar meaning, but to have been used of the female. Martial writes of a Spanish dancing-girl (who he suggests would make a suitable present for someone):
:
:: ("She waggles so tremulously, she arouses so charmingly, that she has made
Hippolytus himself into a masturbator")
Again Martial 10.68:
:
:: ("Could you possibly be prettier as you grind? You learn easily, and could do everything they do in
Corinth
Corinth ( ; el, Κόρινθος, Kórinthos, ) is the successor to an ancient city, and is a former municipality in Corinthia, Peloponnese (region), Peloponnese, which is located in south-central Greece. Since the 2011 local government refor ...
; but you'll never quite be
Lais, Laelia.")
Lais was a famous prostitute or courtesan, and Corinth was the site of a major temple of
Aphrodite
Aphrodite ( ; grc-gre, Ἀφροδίτη, Aphrodítē; , , ) is an ancient Greek goddess associated with love, lust, beauty, pleasure, passion, and procreation. She was syncretized with the Roman goddess . Aphrodite's major symbols inclu ...
; the temple employed more than a thousand
cult prostitutes.
Synonyms and metaphors
These words have few synonyms or metaphors, and belong almost to a sort of technical vocabulary.
In the Romance languages
Both words seem to have been lost in Romance.
: to masturbate
This word is found twice in the poet Martial, but apparently not in earlier writers. Martial writes in one poem (11.104):
:
::("The
Phrygian slaves used to masturbate behind the doors
whenever
Hector
In Greek mythology, Hector (; grc, Ἕκτωρ, Hektōr, label=none, ) is a character in Homer's Iliad. He was a Trojan prince and the greatest warrior for Troy during the Trojan War. Hector led the Trojans and their allies in the defense o ...
's wife sat on her husband's 'horse'.")
The word also occurs. In 14.203 Martial writes of a Spanish girl from Gādēs (
Cádiz
Cádiz (, , ) is a city and port in southwestern Spain. It is the capital of the Province of Cádiz, one of eight that make up the autonomous community of Andalusia.
Cádiz, one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in Western Europe, ...
):
:
::("She wiggles so sexily and itches for it so charmingly
that she would have made a masturbator out of Hippolytus himself!")
Hippolytus was famous in mythology for his chastity, and for refusing the advances of his stepmother, Phaedra.
Etymology
Lewis and Short suggest that the word may be derived from "to defile oneself with a hand", and this is the usual view, and supported ("with some hesitation") by J.N. Adams. Another view, however, is that it comes from * + ("to excite the penis"), assuming an otherwise unattested meaning of "penis" for ("male"). The supporters of this view cite another word (from ), which occurs once in Latin literature in Petronius (134.5), and which appears from the context to mean "beating the penis with a wand (to stimulate it)". It is argued that in this word, the element ''mās-'' may be the same as in . Yet another proposed etymology is that the element ''masturb-'' derives from a Proto-Indo-European root *''mostrgh-'' meaning "brain, marrow", and hence "semen".
Synonyms and euphemisms
Martial (9.41) criticises a Roman gentleman for masturbating, using the phrase:
:
::("you use your left hand as a concubine and your hand serves Venus as your girlfriend")
The hand used for masturbating by the Romans was evidently the left one, as Martial 11.73 confirms. (Compare also the fragment of the satirist Lucilius quoted above in the section on .)
In another poem (11.22) Martial advises a friend:
:
::("do at least cease from troubling your groins with copulating hand").
He continues:
:
::("In smooth-skinned boys this (i.e their hand) sins more than their cock,
and their fingers hasten the process of turning them into a man.")
This apparently dates back to a belief of Aristotle that vigorous sexual activity caused a boy's voice to turn rapidly into that of a man.
In another poem (2.43), however, Martial admits that he himself for want of a sexual partner sometimes resorts to the practice:
:
::("but as for me, my hand has to serve instead of
Ganymede").
In another (11.46), addressed to a man who finds it difficult in middle age to get an erection, Martial uses the word ("I shove" or "prod") to signify masturbation:
:
::("and your shrivelled dick is prodded by your fingers until they get tired,
but doesn't raise its worn out head even when provoked").
The frequentative form of is ("to thrust or shove repeatedly"). This occurs in only one place, in Catullus 56:
:
:: ("Recently I caught the ward of my girlfriend
'thrusting'; this boy, if it please
Dione,
using my 'hard one' as a weapon, I 'cut'.")
The meaning of here is disputed. "Masturbating" was the interpretation of
A. E. Housman
Alfred Edward Housman (; 26 March 1859 – 30 April 1936) was an English classical scholar and poet. After an initially poor performance while at university, he took employment as a clerk in London and established his academic reputation by pub ...
; he also wanted to read as with the meaning "there and then". Others, however, understand Catullus to mean that the boy was caught having sex with a girl; in which case, probably means "in a threesome", since a , according to the agricultural writer
Cato the Elder
Marcus Porcius Cato (; 234–149 BC), also known as Cato the Censor ( la, Censorius), the Elder and the Wise, was a Roman soldier, senator, and historian known for his conservatism and opposition to Hellenization. He was the first to write his ...
, was a team of three oxen pulling a plough. Uden (2007) translates: "I just caught a kid banging his girlfriend", explaining that is a derogatory diminutive.
The verb (literally "to cut" or "kill") is used as slang for homosexual penetration elsewhere in Latin literature, such as at ''Priapeia'' 26.10, a poem in which
Priapus boasts that in his earlier days ("I used to 'cut' (i.e. sodomise) thieves, however strong they were").
Dione, was the mother of
Aphrodite
Aphrodite ( ; grc-gre, Ἀφροδίτη, Aphrodítē; , , ) is an ancient Greek goddess associated with love, lust, beauty, pleasure, passion, and procreation. She was syncretized with the Roman goddess . Aphrodite's major symbols inclu ...
(Venus), goddess of love; but the term was also used in poetry for Venus herself.
: to defecate
was the chief Latin word for
defecation.
Etymology
The word has a distinguished Indo-European parentage, which may perhaps relate to nursery words or
children's slang that tends to recur across many different cultures. It would appear to be cognate with the Greek noun , ''kopros'', meaning "excrement" (hence,
coprophilia
Coprophilia (from Greek κόπρος, ''kópros'' 'excrement' and φιλία, ''philía'' 'liking, fondness'), also called scatophilia or scat (Greek: σκατά, ''skatá'' 'feces'), is the paraphilia involving sexual arousal and pleasure from ...
). It also exists in
Germanic; in
German
German(s) may refer to:
* Germany (of or related to)
** Germania (historical use)
* Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language
** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law
**Ge ...
,
Swedish
Swedish or ' may refer to:
Anything from or related to Sweden, a country in Northern Europe. Or, specifically:
* Swedish language, a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Sweden and Finland
** Swedish alphabet, the official alphabet used by ...
(''kack''),
Scots (as both noun and verb, ''cack'' or ''cackie'', the
diminutive), whilst
English
English usually refers to:
* English language
* English people
English may also refer to:
Peoples, culture, and language
* ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England
** English national ide ...
"poppiecock" derives from
Dutch
Dutch commonly refers to:
* Something of, from, or related to the Netherlands
* Dutch people ()
* Dutch language ()
Dutch may also refer to:
Places
* Dutch, West Virginia, a community in the United States
* Pennsylvania Dutch Country
People E ...
''pappe kak'', "
diarrhea
Diarrhea, also spelled diarrhoea, is the condition of having at least three loose, liquid, or watery bowel movements each day. It often lasts for a few days and can result in dehydration due to fluid loss. Signs of dehydration often begin w ...
". It exists in
Turkish (kaka),
Irish
Irish may refer to:
Common meanings
* Someone or something of, from, or related to:
** Ireland, an island situated off the north-western coast of continental Europe
***Éire, Irish language name for the isle
** Northern Ireland, a constituent unit ...
and
Scottish Gaelic
Scottish Gaelic ( gd, Gàidhlig ), also known as Scots Gaelic and Gaelic, is a Goidelic language (in the Celtic branch of the Indo-European language family) native to the Gaels of Scotland. As a Goidelic language, Scottish Gaelic, as well ...
(''cac''),
Hebrew
Hebrew (; ; ) is a Northwest Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Historically, it is one of the spoken languages of the Israelites and their longest-surviving descendants, the Jews and Samaritans. It was largely preserved ...
,
Arabic
Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C. E.Watson; Walter ...
dialects,
Hungarian (kaka),
Ukrainian
Ukrainian may refer to:
* Something of, from, or related to Ukraine
* Something relating to Ukrainians, an East Slavic people from Eastern Europe
* Something relating to demographics of Ukraine in terms of demography and population of Ukraine
* So ...
(''какати''),
Russian
Russian(s) refers to anything related to Russia, including:
*Russians (, ''russkiye''), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries
*Rossiyane (), Russian language term for all citizens and peo ...
,
Lithuanian and
Persian/Isfahani accent (''keke''). In
British English
British English (BrE, en-GB, or BE) is, according to Lexico, Oxford Dictionaries, "English language, English as used in Great Britain, as distinct from that used elsewhere". More narrowly, it can refer specifically to the English language in ...
, "caca" is occasionally used as childish slang for excrement (similar to
American English
American English, sometimes called United States English or U.S. English, is the set of varieties of the English language native to the United States. English is the most widely spoken language in the United States and in most circumstances i ...
"poop"), a word whose level of obscene loading varies from country to country; whilst in
Scotland
Scotland (, ) is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. Covering the northern third of the island of Great Britain, mainland Scotland has a Anglo-Scottish border, border with England to the southeast ...
and in
Ireland
Ireland ( ; ga, Éire ; Ulster Scots dialect, Ulster-Scots: ) is an island in the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean, in Northwestern Europe, north-western Europe. It is separated from Great Britain to its east by the North Channel (Grea ...
, "cack" is occasionally used either as a mild
interjection
An interjection is a word or expression that occurs as an utterance on its own and expresses a spontaneous feeling or reaction. It is a diverse category, encompassing many different parts of speech, such as exclamations ''(ouch!'', ''wow!''), curse ...
, or as an impolite adjective to mean of poor quality, broken, nonsense. It also exists as a loan in
Finnish
Finnish may refer to:
* Something or someone from, or related to Finland
* Culture of Finland
* Finnish people or Finns, the primary ethnic group in Finland
* Finnish language, the national language of the Finnish people
* Finnish cuisine
See also ...
(''kakka''). The derivatives of this Latin word appear in
Spanish
Spanish might refer to:
* Items from or related to Spain:
**Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain
**Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries
**Spanish cuisine
Other places
* Spanish, Ontario, Can ...
,
Catalan
Catalan may refer to:
Catalonia
From, or related to Catalonia:
* Catalan language, a Romance language
* Catalans, an ethnic group formed by the people from, or with origins in, Northern or southern Catalonia
Places
* 13178 Catalan, asteroid #1 ...
,
Portuguese
Portuguese may refer to:
* anything of, from, or related to the country and nation of Portugal
** Portuguese cuisine, traditional foods
** Portuguese language, a Romance language
*** Portuguese dialects, variants of the Portuguese language
** Portu ...
,
Italian
Italian(s) may refer to:
* Anything of, from, or related to the people of Italy over the centuries
** Italians, an ethnic group or simply a citizen of the Italian Republic or Italian Kingdom
** Italian language, a Romance language
*** Regional Ita ...
(''cacca''),
Romanian
Romanian may refer to:
*anything of, from, or related to the country and nation of Romania
**Romanians, an ethnic group
**Romanian language, a Romance language
*** Romanian dialects, variants of the Romanian language
** Romanian cuisine, tradition ...
, and
French.
Also, in
Slavic languages
The Slavic languages, also known as the Slavonic languages, are Indo-European languages spoken primarily by the Slavic peoples and their descendants. They are thought to descend from a proto-language called Proto-Slavic, spoken during the ...
: ''kakati''.
Usage
The verb is usually used intransitively. Martial (1.92.11) says:
:
::("not your arsehole, for something that never shits isn't an arsehole")
However, in the phrase below, from Catullus 36, it is transitive:
:
:: ("Volusius's ''Annals'', paper covered in shit")
The prefixed form is transitive.
Seneca
Seneca may refer to:
People and language
* Seneca (name), a list of people with either the given name or surname
* Seneca people, one of the six Iroquois tribes of North America
** Seneca language, the language of the Seneca people
Places Extrat ...
describes the Emperor
Claudius's final words, spoken after farting loudly:
:
:: ("His last saying heard among mortals was the following, after he had let out a rather loud sound from that part with which he spoke more easily: 'O no, I think I've shat myself!' Whether he did or not, I don't know. He certainly shat on everything else.")
Synonyms and metaphors
Few synonyms are attested in Classical Latin, apart from a word , attested by the grammarian
Festus (but nowhere else) in the meaning . The word comes much later.
A euphemism which occurs in
Petronius (116) is :
:
:("We also had whole-wheat bread, which I prefer to white, since it gives you strength and also when I relieve myself, I don't feel pain.")
The same euphemism is used in Petronius of relieving oneself of gas (see below).
In the Romance languages
is preserved unaltered in Sardinian and the southern Italian dialects, and with little alteration in Italian (cagare). It becomes Galician, Catalan, Spanish, and Portuguese ''cagar'', in Vegliot Dalmatian ''kakuor'', in French ''chier'', and in
Romanian
Romanian may refer to:
*anything of, from, or related to the country and nation of Romania
**Romanians, an ethnic group
**Romanian language, a Romance language
*** Romanian dialects, variants of the Romanian language
** Romanian cuisine, tradition ...
as ''căcare'' (the act of taking a dump) or ''a (se) căca''. (Feces are referred to as ''caca'' in French, Catalan,
Romanian
Romanian may refer to:
*anything of, from, or related to the country and nation of Romania
**Romanians, an ethnic group
**Romanian language, a Romance language
*** Romanian dialects, variants of the Romanian language
** Romanian cuisine, tradition ...
(besides ''căcat'') and Spanish childhood slang, while
Portuguese
Portuguese may refer to:
* anything of, from, or related to the country and nation of Portugal
** Portuguese cuisine, traditional foods
** Portuguese language, a Romance language
*** Portuguese dialects, variants of the Portuguese language
** Portu ...
and
Romanian
Romanian may refer to:
*anything of, from, or related to the country and nation of Romania
**Romanians, an ethnic group
**Romanian language, a Romance language
*** Romanian dialects, variants of the Romanian language
** Romanian cuisine, tradition ...
use the very same word with the general meaning of anything that looks or smells malodorous or reminiscent of excrement.) German ''kacken'', Dutch ''kakken'', Czech ''kakat'', Lithuanian ''kakoti'', Russian какать (''kakat), Icelandic ''kúka'', Bosnian ''kakiti'' etc. are all slang words meaning "to defecate", most of them having roughly the same level of severity as the English expression "take a dump".
: feces
is the basic Latin word for
excrement
Feces ( or faeces), known colloquially and in slang as poo and poop, are the solid or semi-solid remains of food that was not digested in the small intestine, and has been broken down by bacteria in the large intestine. Feces contain a relat ...
. Frequently used, it appears in most of the
Romance languages
The Romance languages, sometimes referred to as Latin languages or Neo-Latin languages, are the various modern languages that evolved from Vulgar Latin. They are the only extant subgroup of the Italic languages in the Indo-European language ...
.
Etymology
represents Indo-European *''s-merd-'', whose root sense was likely "something malodorous." It is cognate with
German
German(s) may refer to:
* Germany (of or related to)
** Germania (historical use)
* Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language
** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law
**Ge ...
''Mist'' (dung), Lithuanian "smirdė́ti" ("to stink"), Russian "смерде́ть" (''smerdét, "to stink") and
Polish
Polish may refer to:
* Anything from or related to Poland, a country in Europe
* Polish language
* Poles
Poles,, ; singular masculine: ''Polak'', singular feminine: ''Polka'' or Polish people, are a West Slavic nation and ethnic group, w ...
''śmierdzieć'' ("to stink").
Usage
The word is attested in classical texts mostly in
veterinary
Veterinary medicine is the branch of medicine that deals with the prevention, management, diagnosis, and treatment of disease, disorder, and injury in animals. Along with this, it deals with animal rearing, husbandry, breeding, research on nutri ...
and
agricultural contexts, meaning "manure".
Cato the Elder
Marcus Porcius Cato (; 234–149 BC), also known as Cato the Censor ( la, Censorius), the Elder and the Wise, was a Roman soldier, senator, and historian known for his conservatism and opposition to Hellenization. He was the first to write his ...
uses it, as well as , while the ''Mulomedicina Chironis'' speaks of , "cattle manure".
Unlike the English word "shit", could be both singular and plural. In
Horace (''Satires'' 1.8.37), a talking statue of
Priapus says:
:
::("But if I'm telling a lie, may my head be spattered with the white droppings
of
ravens, and may Julius, delicate Pediatia, and the thief Voranus
come to piss and shit on me!")
In one of his verse fables (4.18.25),
Phaedrus speaks of some dogs who have had their backsides deodorised with perfume. But on hearing thunder,
:
::("suddenly they shit out the perfume mixed with turds")
The word can also be used in a metaphorical sense, as at Martial 3.17, speaking of a pastry which had been blown on by a man with impure breath (caused no doubt by oral sex) to cool it down:
:
:: ("But nobody could touch it: it was a piece of shit.")
Synonyms and metaphors
The politer terms for in Classical Latin were (gen. ), "manure" and or , "filth." was used frequently in the
Vulgate
The Vulgate (; also called (Bible in common tongue), ) is a late-4th-century Latin translation of the Bible.
The Vulgate is largely the work of Jerome who, in 382, had been commissioned by Pope Damasus I to revise the Gospels u ...
, as in its well-known translation of
Psalm
The Book of Psalms ( or ; he, תְּהִלִּים, , lit. "praises"), also known as the Psalms, or the Psalter, is the first book of the ("Writings"), the third section of the Tanakh, and a book of the Old Testament. The title is derived f ...
112:7: (Psalm 113:7 in the
KJV
The King James Version (KJV), also the King James Bible (KJB) and the Authorized Version, is an English translation of the Christian Bible for the Church of England, which was commissioned in 1604 and published in 1611, by sponsorship of K ...
.)
:
:: ("Raising up the needy from the earth : and lifting up the poor out of the dunghill."
DRC
The Democratic Republic of the Congo (french: République démocratique du Congo (RDC), colloquially "La RDC" ), informally Congo-Kinshasa, DR Congo, the DRC, the DROC, or the Congo, and formerly and also colloquially Zaire, is a country in ...
)
In Classical Latin, , plural , meant the dregs, such as are found in a bottle of wine; the word did not acquire the sense of
feces until later.
In the Romance languages
is productive in the Romance languages, and is the
etymon
Etymology ()The New Oxford Dictionary of English (1998) – p. 633 "Etymology /ˌɛtɪˈmɒlədʒi/ the study of the class in words and the way their meanings have changed throughout time". is the study of the history of the form of words and ...
of French ''merde'', Spanish ''mierda'', and in Vegliot Dalmatian ''miarda''. It is preserved unaltered in Catalan, Galician, Italian, Portuguese, and Sardinian. It was preserved in
Romanian
Romanian may refer to:
*anything of, from, or related to the country and nation of Romania
**Romanians, an ethnic group
**Romanian language, a Romance language
*** Romanian dialects, variants of the Romanian language
** Romanian cuisine, tradition ...
too, not for feces, where ''căcat'' (derived from ''caco'') is used instead, but in the word ''dezmierda'', originally meaning "to clean the bottom of (an infant)"; subsequently becoming "to cuddle" or "to fondle".
and : passing wind
is the basic Latin word for passing
intestinal wind. In the ''Sermones'' 1.8, 46, Horace writes:
:
Christopher Smart translates this passage as "from my cleft bum of fig-tree I let out a fart, which made as great an explosion as a burst bladder". The "I" of this satire is the god
Priapus, and Smart explains that he was made of fig-tree wood which split through being poorly prepared.
Martial also uses the word several times, including the following (10.15):
:
:: ("I don't see any other reason why I should believe you a friend,
other than that you are in the habit of farting in front of me, Crispus.")
A word ("to fart in the face of, mock") is used in Horace (''Sat.'' 1.9.70).
Catullus also uses the noun in one of his poems (54).
A rarer word, meaning "to fart silently", was . This is hinted at in Cicero's letter ''ad Fam.'' 9.22, where he says that the word is potentially obscene, in the same way as the word . The word is not recorded in Lewis and Short's ''Latin Dictionary'' and does not appear to have been used by any extant author. However, the ''Oxford Latin Dictionary'' quotes an inscription from a public bath in
Ostia which says
:
::("cunning
Chilon taught how to fart silently").
Judging from derivatives in some of the daughter languages (see below), there was also a noun * "a silent fart", but no trace of this is found in the extant texts.
The noise made by escaping flatulence was usually called , a word which could refer to "a noise" of various kinds, and the verb was used of breaking wind noisily. Martial writes of a certain man, who after an embarrassing incident of flatulence when praying in the temple of Jupiter, was careful in the future to take precautions:
:
::("Whenever he wants to come to the
Capitolium
A ''Capitolium'' (Latin) was an ancient Roman temple dedicated to the Capitoline Triad of gods Jupiter, Juno and Minerva. A capitolium was built on a prominent area in many cities in Italy and the Roman provinces, particularly during the Augu ...
(to pray)
he first heads for the toilets of Paterclus
and farts ten or twenty times.
But however much he takes precautions by breaking wind,
he still salutes Jupiter with clenched buttocks.")
Euphemisms
In Petronius (47), in the speech of the vulgar millionaire Trimalchio, euphemisms and "do what helps one" are both used for relieving oneself of wind:
:
::("And so if any of you wants to relieve himself (of wind), there's no need for him to be ashamed. Personally I think there's nothing worse than holding it in. And I never forbid anyone to relieve himself of wind even in the dining-room, and doctors forbid people to hold it in as well.")
Etymology
The antiquity of and its membership in the core inherited vocabulary is clear from its
reduplicating perfect stem. It is cognate with Greek (''perdomai''), English ''
fart
Flatulence, in humans, is the expulsion of gas from the intestines via the anus, commonly referred to as farting. "Flatus" is the medical word for gas generated in the stomach or bowels. A proportion of intestinal gas may be swallowed environm ...
'', Bulgarian ''prdi'', Polish ''pierdzieć'', Russian пердеть (''perdet),
Lithuanian ''persti'',
Sanskrit
Sanskrit (; attributively , ; nominally , , ) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had diffused there from the northwest in the late ...
''pardate'', and
Avestan ''pərəδaiti'', all of which mean the same thing.
is clearly
onomatopoeic. The Old Norse ''fisa'' may be compared, although the correspondence in sounds is not exact.
In the Romance languages and English
and survive in Romance. In French, the noun
pet' from ''pēditum'' and the derived verb
péter' (for earlier ''poire'' from ''pēdere'') are very much alive. In Catalan, the verb is ''petar-se'' and the noun is ''pet''. In Spanish the noun ''pedo'' as well as the verb
''peerse''and ''pedorrear'' are similarly derived. Portuguese ''peido'' and ''peidar(-se), (-dei)'' and Galician ''peido'' and ''peidar(se)'' are related. Italian ''peto'' is less common than ''scorreggia'' and its derived verb ''scorreggiare'', but in Neapolitan ''pireto'' is frequently used.
The English word ''petard'', found mostly in the cliché "hoist with his own petard", comes from an early explosive device, the noise of which was likened to that of farting. English also has ''petomania'' for a musical performance of breaking intestinal wind, and ''petomane'' for the performer, after ''
Le Pétomane
Joseph Pujol (June 1, 1857 – August 8, 1945), better known by his stage name Le Pétomane (, ), was a French flatulist (professional farter) and entertainer. He was famous for his remarkable control of the abdominal muscles, which enabled him ...
'', a French performer active in the early 20th century.
, though rare in Latin texts, has derivates in several Romance languages, such as Romanian ''bășí'' (verb) and ''bășínă'' (noun); French ''vesse'' (noun) and ''vesser'' (verb).
and : urination
(infinitive ) and (infinitive ) are two variant forms of what is likely a single Latin verb meaning "to urinate", or in more vulgar usage, "to take a
piss." The two verbs share a perfect or , and a past participle or . It is likely that represents a variant conjugation of with a
nasal infix
The nasal infix is a reconstructed nasal consonant or syllable that was inserted ( infixed) into the stem or root of a word in the Proto-Indo-European language. It has reflexes in several ancient and modern Indo-European languages. It is one of ...
.
In Classical Latin, the form was more common than . In some
Late Latin
Late Latin ( la, Latinitas serior) is the scholarly name for the form of Literary Latin of late antiquity.Roberts (1996), p. 537. English dictionary definitions of Late Latin date this period from the , and continuing into the 7th century in t ...
texts a variant first conjugation form is attested. This is the form that is productive in Romance.
The Classical Latin word became the accepted medical word meaning "to urinate". It is the source of the English medical term "
micturition reflex
Urination, also known as micturition, is the release of urine from the urinary bladder through the urethra to the outside of the body. It is the urinary system's form of excretion. It is also known medically as micturition, voiding, uresis, ...
".
Usage
Martial's epigram 3.78 uses and to make a
bilingual pun:
:
:: ("You pissed once off the side of a boat, Paulinus.
Do you want to piss again? then you will be
Palinurus
Palinurus (''Palinūrus''), in Roman mythology and especially Virgil's ''Aeneid'', is the coxswain of Aeneas' ship. Later authors used him as a general type of navigator or guide. Palinurus is an example of human sacrifice; his life is the price ...
.")
(Note that ''palin'' is a Greek word meaning "once again". Palinurus was
Aeneas
In Greco-Roman mythology, Aeneas (, ; from ) was a Trojan hero, the son of the Trojan prince Anchises and the Greek goddess Aphrodite (equivalent to the Roman Venus). His father was a first cousin of King Priam of Troy (both being grandsons ...
's helmsman who fell overboard in a storm in the ''
Aeneid
The ''Aeneid'' ( ; la, Aenē̆is or ) is a Latin epic poem, written by Virgil between 29 and 19 BC, that tells the legendary story of Aeneas, a Trojan who fled the fall of Troy and travelled to Italy, where he became the ancestor of th ...
''.)
The verbs and could also be used euphemistically of sexual intercourse. Horace (''Satires'' 1.2.44), speaking of the punishments meted out to adulterers, says:
:
::("One got thoroughly 'pissed on' (i.e. raped) by the servants; it even
happened once that they cut off someone's balls and lecherous 'tail'
with a knife.")
Catullus (67.23) speaks of a father who "pissed in the lap of his own son" (), that is, had sex with his son's wife.
Urine
The most usual word for urine was , which is attested in Latin as early as Cicero, and became the usual polite term. The relationship with the Greek verb (''oureō''), "to urinate", is not clear. In Classical Latin, however, the verb ''ūrīnārī'' meant "to dive into water", and was "a diver", "those who dive".
Catullus (37) writes contemptuously of a certain Spaniard who was one of the lovers of his girlfriend Lesbia:
:
::("You above all, one of the long-haired ones,
son of rabbit-filled
Celtiberia
The Celtiberians were a group of Celts and Celticized peoples inhabiting an area in the central-northeastern Iberian Peninsula during the final centuries BCE. They were explicitly mentioned as being Celts by several classic authors (e.g. Strab ...
,
Egnatius, made handsome by your dark beard,
and your teeth brushed clean with Iberian piss.")
Another word for urine, but less commonly used, was . This word relates to , "to wash". The Romans, innocent of
soap
Soap is a salt of a fatty acid used in a variety of cleansing and lubricating products. In a domestic setting, soaps are surfactants usually used for washing, bathing, and other types of housekeeping. In industrial settings, soaps are use ...
, collected urine as a source of
ammonia
Ammonia is an inorganic compound of nitrogen and hydrogen with the formula . A stable binary hydride, and the simplest pnictogen hydride, ammonia is a colourless gas with a distinct pungent smell. Biologically, it is a common nitrogenous wa ...
to use in
laundering clothes. The early agricultural writer Cato, an advocate of cabbage, used this word when he wrote ( 156):
:
::("Cabbage is good for the digestion and for the urine.")
Etymology
''Meiere'' is an inherited Indo-European word. It relates to Sanskrit ''mehati'', "urinates", Persian ''mīz'', "urine", Lithuanian ''myža'', "he/she urinates", Greek (''omeikhein''), "to urinate", which, taken together, point to an Indo-European *''h
3meiģh-''. This IE root with a palatal ''ģh'' was formerly mixed up (e. g. in Pokorny's IEW) with another one with velar ''*gh'' meaning "mist" (Russian ''mgla''), hence erroneous tentative overall translations like "to sprinkle" or "to wet" which still turn up sometimes.
In the Romance languages
Though ''mingere'' and ''meiere'' are the Classical Latin forms, ''meiāre'' seems to have been the popular form in Late Latin. This underlies Galician ''mexar'',
Portuguese
Portuguese may refer to:
* anything of, from, or related to the country and nation of Portugal
** Portuguese cuisine, traditional foods
** Portuguese language, a Romance language
*** Portuguese dialects, variants of the Portuguese language
** Portu ...
''mijar'', and
Spanish
Spanish might refer to:
* Items from or related to Spain:
**Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain
**Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries
**Spanish cuisine
Other places
* Spanish, Ontario, Can ...
''mear''. *''Pissiāre'' represents a borrowing from the
Germanic languages
The Germanic languages are a branch of the Indo-European language family spoken natively by a population of about 515 million people mainly in Europe, North America, Oceania and Southern Africa. The most widely spoken Germanic language, E ...
, and appears elsewhere in the Romance territory, as in French ''pisser'', Catalan ''pixar'', Italian ''pisciare'' and
Romanian
Romanian may refer to:
*anything of, from, or related to the country and nation of Romania
**Romanians, an ethnic group
**Romanian language, a Romance language
*** Romanian dialects, variants of the Romanian language
** Romanian cuisine, tradition ...
''a (se) pișa'', along with English ''to piss.''
Latin words relating to prostitution
Compared to the anatomical frankness of the Roman vocabulary about sexual acts and body parts, the Roman vocabulary relating to
prostitution seems
euphemistic
A euphemism () is an innocuous word or expression used in place of one that is deemed offensive or suggests something unpleasant. Some euphemisms are intended to amuse, while others use bland, inoffensive terms for concepts that the user wishes ...
and
metaphor
A metaphor is a figure of speech that, for rhetorical effect, directly refers to one thing by mentioning another. It may provide (or obscure) clarity or identify hidden similarities between two different ideas. Metaphors are often compared wi ...
ical.
Prostitutes were called ''meretrīx'', "earner", and ''lupa'', "
she-wolf"; a
brothel was a ''lupānar''; these words referred to the mercantile and perceived predatory activities of prostitutes. The Latin verb ''prōstō'' meant "to be up for sale" and ''prōstituō'' meant "to expose for public sale."
The poet Juvenal (6.120-3) describes how the disgraced Empress
Messalina
Valeria Messalina (; ) was the third wife of Roman emperor Claudius. She was a paternal cousin of Emperor Nero, a second cousin of Emperor Caligula, and a great-grandniece of Emperor Augustus. A powerful and influential woman with a reputatio ...
used to enjoy playing the part of a prostitute in a brothel:
:''sed nigrum flāvō crīnem abscondente galērō
intrāvit calidum veterī centōne lupānar
et cellam vacuam atque suam; tunc nūda papillīs
prōstitit aurātīs titulum mentīta Lyciscae''
::("But hiding her black hair with a yellow wig,
wearing an old patchwork cloak, she entered the hot brothel
and an empty cell of her own; then she offered herself for sale nude
with her nipples covered in gold, using the false name of 'Lycisca'.")
The pimp or pander in charge of the brothel, who dismissed the girls at closing time, was called ''lēnō'' if male (Juvenal 6.127) and ''lēna'' if female.
The neuter word ''scortum'' could refer to either a male or female prostitute. This word may relate to Latin ''scorteus'', "made of
leather
Leather is a strong, flexible and durable material obtained from the tanning, or chemical treatment, of animal skins and hides to prevent decay. The most common leathers come from cattle, sheep, goats, equine animals, buffalo, pigs and hog ...
or hide", much as English refers to the ''skin trade''. Lewis and Short quote Varro: ''pellem antīquī dīcēbant scortum'' ("in the old days people referred to skin as ''scortum''").
Another word for a male prostitute, notably one who is no longer a boy, is ''exolētus'' (literally "grown up, adult"). Cicero (''pro Milone'', 21, 55) writes:
:''Clōdius, quī semper sēcum scorta, semper exolētōs, semper lupās dūceret''
::("Clodius, who always used to take with him whores, and male and female prostitutes")
The verb ''scortor, scortārī'', which occurs chiefly in
Plautus
Titus Maccius Plautus (; c. 254 – 184 BC), commonly known as Plautus, was a Roman playwright of the Old Latin period. His comedies are the earliest Latin literary works to have survived in their entirety. He wrote Palliata comoedia, the ...
, means "to go whoring" or "to employ prostitutes". Plautus illustrates its use in ''
Asinaria
''Asinaria'' ("The Comedy of Asses") is a comic play written in Latin by the Roman playwright Titus Maccius Plautus. The play concerns a young man called Argyrippus who is in love with a prostitute called Philenium, but does not have the money to p ...
'':
: ''quandō mēcum pariter pōtant, pariter scortārī solent,
hanc quidem, quam nactus, praedam pariter cum illīs partiam.''
:: ("Whenever they go drinking with me, they also usually go whoring with me.
So I'll share this booty which I've captured with them equally.")
The important and productive words for a prostitute in Romance, *''pūta'' or *''pūtāna'', are not attested in Classical Latin, despite their many Romance derivatives: French ''putain'' and ''pute'', Italian ''puttana'', Spanish, Filipino, Catalan, Portuguese and Galician ''puta''. French linguists state that they relate to Latin ''pūteō, pūtēre'', "to stink," and thus represent yet another metaphor.. Spaniards
María Moliner (author of a famous dictionary of Spanish) and
Joan Coromines
Joan Coromines i Vigneaux (; also frequently spelled ''Joan Corominas''; Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, by Joan Corominas icand José Antonio Pascual, Editorial Gredos, 1989, Madrid, . Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain 1 ...
think they came from Vulgar Latin *''putta'', feminine form of *''puttus'', an emphatic form of ''pūtus'', "pure" or "boy". In Portugal, the word ''puto'' has the same connotation as "small kid" or "little boy"; in Brazil, on the other hand, it is slang for "pissed off" or enraged males in general or as a colloquial, mildly offensive term for male escorts (more formally called ''prostitutos'' or ''michês'') – the male counterpart of the slang ''puta'', with the same meanings.
In popular culture
The
HBO/
BBC2 original
television series
A television show – or simply TV show – is any content produced for viewing on a television set which can be broadcast via over-the-air, satellite, or cable, excluding breaking news, advertisements, or trailers that are typically placed be ...
''
Rome
, established_title = Founded
, established_date = 753 BC
, founder = King Romulus (legendary)
, image_map = Map of comune of Rome (metropolitan city of Capital Rome, region Lazio, Italy).svg
, map_caption ...
'' depicts the city with the grit and grime that is often absent from earlier productions, including that of language. But since the actors speak English, Latin profanity is mostly seen in written
graffiti
Graffiti (plural; singular ''graffiti'' or ''graffito'', the latter rarely used except in archeology) is art that is written, painted or drawn on a wall or other surface, usually without permission and within public view. Graffiti ranges from s ...
, such as:
* ATIA FELLAT, "
Atia sucks"; "fellatio" is a noun derived from this verb.
* ATIA AMAT OMNES, "Atia loves all
en. Thus calling her a whore or slut.
* CAESARI SERVILIA FUTATRIX, "Servilia is
Caesar
Gaius Julius Caesar (; ; 12 July 100 BC – 15 March 44 BC), was a Roman general and statesman. A member of the First Triumvirate, Caesar led the Roman armies in the Gallic Wars before defeating his political rival Pompey in a civil war, an ...
's bitch".
See also
*
Vulgar Latin
Vulgar Latin, also known as Popular or Colloquial Latin, is the range of non-formal registers of Latin spoken from the Late Roman Republic onward. Through time, Vulgar Latin would evolve into numerous Romance languages. Its literary counterpa ...
*
Sexuality in ancient Rome
Sexual attitudes and behaviors in ancient Rome are indicated by art, literature, and inscriptions, and to a lesser extent by archaeological remains such as erotic artifacts and architecture. It has sometimes been assumed that "unlimited sexual ...
*
Homosexuality in ancient Rome
Homosexuality in ancient Rome often differs markedly from the contemporary West. Latin lacks words that would precisely translate "homosexual" and "heterosexual". The primary dichotomy of ancient Roman sexuality was active/ dominant/masculine ...
Bibliography
Primary literary sources are discussed in the text. Many of the graffiti discussed are found in the ''
Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum''.
* Adams, Douglas Q. (1985
"Latin ''Mas'' and ''Masturbari''" ''Glotta'', 63. Bd., 3./4. H. (1985), pp. 241–247.
* Adams, James N. (1981a)
"A Type of Sexual Euphemism in Latin" ''Phoenix'', Vol. 35, No. 2 (Summer, 1981), pp. 120–128. Published by: Classical Association of Canada.
* Adams, James N. (1981b)
"''Culus'', ''Clunes'' and Their Synonyms in Latin" ''Glotta'', 59. Bd., 3./4. H. (1981), pp. 231–264.
* Adams, James N. (1983)
"Martial 2. 83" ''Classical Philology'', Vol. 78, No. 4 (Oct., 1983), pp. 311–315. (A reply to Richlin (1981).)
* Adams, James N. (1990
982
Year 982 ( CMLXXXII) was a common year starting on Sunday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar.
Events
By place Europe
* Summer – Emperor Otto II (the Red) assembles an imperial expeditionary force at Tar ...
. ''The Latin Sexual Vocabulary'' (Johns Hopkins, 1990
982
Year 982 ( CMLXXXII) was a common year starting on Sunday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar.
Events
By place Europe
* Summer – Emperor Otto II (the Red) assembles an imperial expeditionary force at Tar ...
.
Introduction)
* (Anon.) (1868)
''The Index Expurgatorius of Martial, Literally Translated, Comprising All the Epigrams hitherto Omitted by English Translators'' Believed to have been written by
George Augustus Sala
George Augustus Henry Fairfield Sala (November 1828 – 8 December 1895) was an author and journalist who wrote extensively for the ''Illustrated London News'' as G. A. S. and was most famous for his articles and leaders for ''The Daily Telegra ...
and
Edward Sellon
Edward Sellon (1818–1866) was an English writer, translator, and illustrator of erotic literature.
Family
Edward Sellon was born 6 January 1818 in Brighton, England (bap. 9 July 1818 in Paddington, England), the only child of Edward Sell ...
among others.
[Sullivan (1990) p. 171.]
* Bain, David (1991)
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Notes
External links
(Latin and English)
(Latin)
Poems of Catullus(Latin)
(Latin)
''Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum''(German and English; partial)
(German)
Cicero's letter ''ad Fam.'' 9.22 (Perseus database)
{{Profanity
Obs
Profanity by language