If you thought having sex was complicated, try defining it.
Lexicographer and language expert Jesse Sheidlower, author of the famed F-Word, and currently serving as Editor at Large (North America) of the Oxford English Dictionary, writes about the challenges of defining sex in all its various manifestations in the dictionary. Sure, we all know what fuck means, but articulating that is a whole different ball game. Even though the word fuck is first found in a dictionary in 1598, it still sends editors into a headspin.
Problems appear to arise from how explicit to be when defining sexual terms, how to include homosexuality, and how to account for the myriad ways in which we get it on. Sheidlower writes, “As we’ve seen, the earliest modern dictionary definition of fuck allows the active role to be performed only by a man; a woman can’t fuck. Since then, dictionaries have taken a broader view.” Thank God for that.
Yet even now, when you look up the word fuck in the OED, you get “In these senses typically, esp. in early use, with a man as the subject of the verb” as the first entry for the verb. But you also get such glorious additions as “1879 Pearl Oct. 127 He fucked all her toes, Her mouth, eyes, and her nose. 1909 J. JOYCE Let. 6 Dec. (1975) 184, I feel mad to..fuck between your two rosy-tipped bubbies. 1969 P. ROTH Portnoy’s Complaint129 They have a whore in there, kid, who fucks the curtain with her bare twat. 1971 A. ANDREWS in A. M. Zwicky et al. Studies out in Left Field (1992) 37 Butch fucked the mannikin through the hole he drilled in its crotch. 1988 S. LEVY Unicorn’s Secret 334 I’d sigh and blow him, or get the oil and jerk him off, or let him fuck my mouth, or let him fuck my cunt, or let him fuck my tits. 1994 N. BAKER Fermataxiv. 222 Fuck my hot ass, Kev. I’m getting closer to the smiley face.”
As Jesse sheidlower sums it up: “If I get hit by a bus tomorrow, I will die with a certain measure of satisfaction knowing that I put the sentence “Butch fucked the mannikin through the hole he drilled in its crotch” into the Oxford English Dictionary.” It’s good someone’s looking out for us.
