linguistics

Sexy stuff explained

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This might be a blur to you now. But read on…

A while ago I wrote a post about Danish idioms. I called it extra exciting expressions, or XXX for short.

For some reason it got a massive response, earning me 1,200 readers in a day – by far the best I’ve ever done. Obviously I’ve been trying to figure out how this happened.

I had this gnawing suspicion: Was it perhaps the fact that the text contained the words xxx, sex and porn? Did this mean search engines brought my text into the ranks of more steamy stuff, misleading horny people into clicking on what they thought was in fact a link to something else entirely? Was I luring innocent wannabe wankers into my seedy den of Danish?

I figured the only way to know was to conduct an experiment, so without further ado, here is an etymological overview explaining the original meaning of the most popular dirty words in English (and if this, too, proves popular, I have my answer to the above questions!):

Fuck. No four-letter word could be more ubiquitous, and yet few people know where it comes from. First recorded in English in Scotland as fukkit, it probably is a bastardisation of the Germanic ficken, which originally just meant to move back and forth, but which is also slang for fucking. The jib on a sailing boat is called a fock in Swedish, so I like to imagine a 16th century Swedish sailor trying to convey his intentions to a likely-looking lass in Glasgow in halting English, and creating the term fucking in the process…

Cock. Straight-forward enough – anyone can see the similarity between the birds (specifically the neck and head – if your appendage starts to look like the rest of cockerel – seek medical attention!), but did you know that the clinical term penis was actually a dirty word to the Romans? Penis means tail in Latin, and it was very taboo (in as far as anything was taboo to the Romans!). The polite word for it was coles.

Pussy needs no further explanation. But cunt is more difficult. It traces its heritage to Old Norse’s kunta, meaning slash or slit, but also old Dutch kut, originally meaning sack or scrotum (proving that words can change not only meaning but also gender, apparently!). Regardless of origin, the first mention of the word is from 1230, on a street map of Oxford, where – in what can only be described as a daring marketing campaign – the local talent had named their street Gropeacunt Lane. So much for Oxford being a place for higher learning.

So there you have it. You have hopefully acquired some learning through the medium of deception and etymology, and I will watch with baited breath to see if the punters come rolling in. Who knows, if it works I might have to do what the hookers on the Ox did, and change the name of the blog to Word Porn Alley.

Danish and the Danish 3: XXX (extra exciting expressions)

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Sex sells. You’re reading this, aren’t you? So this post will be about porn.

Not the fleshy kind that elicits one-handed browsing tho (unless you are very particular in your tastes), but word porn. Specifically, some words and expressions that have amazed me in my efforts to decipher Danish and the Danish*.

First of all there’s swearing. There are two kinds of swearing, of course. The first is utilising curse words to emphasise things. Like all non-catholic countries there’s fewer curse words involving deities (beyond Gud and Satan), and more emphasis on bodily functions. So Danes utilise skidt and pisse (shit and piss) a lot – my favourite being pissegodt (literally tasty as piss) – but have also adopted that most prolific of American curses, the f word; only they pronounce it as fåkk.

The other type of swearing takes place when a mere promise isn’t enough. The Danish language has a peculiar expression here: Amager halshugg. Turns out Amager was the place of execution in Copenhagen; halshugg means decapitation. Interestingly, this expression is apparently very popular with recent middle eastern additions to the population, coming as they do from a culture where swearing of this kind is more prevalent. A Syrian refugee using a turn of phrase that’s shorthand for “may I be taken to the Danish capital’s executioner for capital punishment” – now that’s integration for you!

Overall there are quite a few historical references in Danish expressions, and few are flattering to a Swede: when something går ad Pommern til (lit. “goes to Pomerania” – an area in the Baltic that used to be Swedish), it means it’s going straight to Hell. If someone is being beaten up really badly they are slået til lirekassemænd – beaten until they become organ grinders – a profession associated with war invalids in the 19th century after – you guessed it! – wars with Sweden and others.

Who is to say Danes aren’t longing for revenge still? They might not say it out loud, but there are clues: if you compare, say, a Swedish matchbox – which features an innocent, naked child on the cover – with its Danish equivalent, you will find an old man there instead. Innocent enough, until you realise he is maritime war hero Tordenskiold, responsible for burning the Swedish enemy fleet.

Come on baby, light my fire...

So it all comes back to their history. It may be that the Danish sentiment is best summed up by the undying phrase of former prime minister Uffe Elleman-Jensen, who, after the Danes had voted against joining deeper cooperation with the rest of the EU, and then won their only European Football Championship to date, said: If you can’t join them, beat them.

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*For more word porn, you can read these posts from Germany and Slovenia, you pervs.