I have encountered a couple instances of using ‘do sex’ rather than ‘have sex’. The Kaiser Chiefs’ song “Every Day I Love You Less and Less” contains the line
which I was willing to consider a one-time instance until I read The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, whose protagonist often refers to intercourse as ‘doing’ rather than ‘having’ sex. I have not heard this from any English acquaintances, so I’m trying to narrow down exactly where the expression originates. (I’m guessing somewhere in England but I’m not ruling out the possibility that some Americans or Canadians use this phrasing as well.)
Where are you from? Would you say ‘do sex’? Where do you live? Do people around you say ‘do sex’?
For me the answers are
northern Virginia, USA / no / northern Virginia, USA / no
I vividly recall my friend’s sister saying something that was so odd it just stuck in my head.
She had been seeing a guy who was a couple of years older than her, and met a younger, better looking guy who didn’t have much money. She was bemoaning her lot in life and offering us pros and cons of ditching #1 and going for #2 and as part of said list offered up that guy #1 was “really good at sex”. :dubious:
I’ve just never heard it phrased that way before or since.
I live in Vegas. Other than that one time, people here have sex, not do sex. (Preferably often.)
Illiterate people say many strange things. I’m always amazed when singers and sports figures speak to reporters. It is quickly clear they struggled though the academic courses in school.
Ha! My friend’s sister is a practicing attorney. Not my attorney, mind you. But she has passed the bar in both NV and CA. I’ve seen her degree. I know that’s what she does for a living. Weird, isn’t it?
[Clerks]
“My love for you is like a rock BERZERKER!
Do you want be making fuck BERZERKER!”
“Did he say ‘making fuck?’”
[/Clerks]
In English, we tend to make new things to do into verbs. When snowboards were invented, people started snowboarding. In Japanese, they “do” new nouns. So they “do snowboard.” They also do sex. Often the common slang is just “do” alone.
Interesting though, that in English, we “do it,” but we don’t “do sex,” even though “it” is sex.
Really? That phrase is so common to my ears that I’m astounded you’ve never heard it. Maybe it’s a regional thing?
It may be a regional thing. We can only determine that if more people answer the OP queries and we get some data to go by.
I just discussed this with my friend, and she reminded me that what her sister said was that guy #1 was “better at sex than” guy #2. My recollection was slightly off.
Still, no, I’ve never heard anyone phrase it like that.
better in bed
a better lover
a better lay
but not “better at sex” before or since that one time.
*The question brought me vividly back to a playtime in kindergarten when some of us were discussing babies, marriage, and whether our parents sleeping naked meant that they loved each other. One girl, rather knowingly, held forth about parents “doing sex”, and all were in awe. She’s the only person I’ve ever heard that construction from, and since we were six years old, it barely counts.
Uncommon enough in the “British” speaking world that 20 years ago it was a recurring joke in the novel “Gridlock”. The heroine didn’t “do sex”, which was deliberate play on “do drugs”. Never heard of anyone in South Africa, UK, Oz or NZ who didn’t get it. IOW the phrase was so unheard of at the time that nobody thought it was anything but really odd.
FWIW Google returns:
“do sex” = ~835,000. But those mostly seem to be “Do sex offender registries work” and other standard constructions.
“have sex” = ~14,900,000. And those are mostly used with the menaing intended here.
So it seems like “do sex” is a very, very rare usage everywhere.
Well… we’ll have sex. But we’ll do “it”. My man can also either do me or have me.
Born and raised in Montreal, now living in MD and never hear the “do sex” thing.
I’ve heard people say “make sex” before, but it’s always been from French-speakers so I think it’s more a quick and incorrect translation than anything else.
In Curious Incident I took that to be a way of illustrating that the protagonist’s knowledge of sex came from having it explained to him rather awkwardly by adults after asking questions like “What are they doing? Why do people do that?”
Maybe her parents raised horses and they were checking the gender of the newly foaled? No, huh?
I too, don’t think it’s a real honest to abe expression, but just something people use when writing in another’s voice to show the speaker isn’t sophisticated about sex, language, or both.
