Do you think innuendo is a form of cowardice or simply tact / necessary cultural etiquette?
In what context? if you mean “to imply something about another person without saying it directly,” then I’d say it’s as cowardly and tacky as any other gossip.
In a humorous context, it can be funny if done properly. It rarely is, though.
I thought it was an Italian suppository.
But seriously, the second choice.
Edit - If someone is using it to be passive-aggressive, then the first choice.
As with any part of speach, turn of phrase or manner of speaking, it can be either.
Inuendo can be sarcastic, spiteful and careless. It can be the easy path to treating our fellow man with callous disregard. Gossip is what comes most easily to mind for me, and while I make no claim of innocence, gossip is cowardly. I imagine a group of peers discussing an absent friend; a homewrecker. One could easily gossip by saying “I think she’s having an affair (yes, I know, an innuendo itself) with him.” But so often gossip is laced with innuendo… “You see the way she looks at him? I’ll bet he’s going out to eat with her / picking the forbidden fruit / getting a little something on the side” Our group is choking back laughter or openly cackling. The very real joys, sorrows and deceits of real people are trivialized. Talking about the sins of another wrapped in clever jokes to make yourself feel better for saying it is cowardly.
Innuendo can also be proper etiquette. I believe in “polite company” and that one hold’s one’s own standard of discourse and social acceptability higher out of respect for those around you. It can be away of allowing another to save face or be self deprecating without being vulgar. Needless to say, there are a few euphemisms that have no clean and polite purpose by their very nature.
Sexual innuendo seems to be a regular part of the third date. I don’t think I ever would have gotten laid if I’d flatly said “wanna come inside and fuck?” but “want to listen to that album we talked about earlier” or “have a cup of coffee” are obvious pleasantries that are synonymous with the former.
I don’t really understand where the cowardly angle comes from. At best, innuendo is clever wordplay. At worst, it is corny and obvious.
At best, ornery and oblivious. 
In certain settings it can be useful as communication between two people who don’t want the rest of the group to catch on to what they’re saying.
I don’t automatically think of it as cowardly. Sometimes it seems rude and crass.
Also rube and brass. 
What are you trying to get at here?
You need to hear some old time radio, especially Burns and Allen. It’s all innuendo and it’s very funny 
Because we can’t have mutual knowledge. Or… oblivious is… (I’m hoping for a simulapost…)
Innuendo allows you to push boundaries without actually crossing them and gives both participants an easy out of the situation if the opposite side isn’t into it.
It can be cowardice in certain situations, but for the most part it just demonstrates high social intelligence and an awareness of (but disregard for) silly societal “sex is wrong and only bad people want sex” baggage we’ve all had crammed into our heads by family/religion/media/etc.
The other part of the social intelligence is that to pull off innuendo you have to be able to say outlandish things but also guage the reactions of the people you’re talking to and handle them in a way that what you said doesn’t offend them. It’s like the guy who can swear in front of polite old people or crack racist jokes to someone of the race they’re making fun of, with the person being not just not being offended but actually LIKING the person more for it. That takes a lot of social intelligence to do.
I have a bartender buddy who, when some douchey guy trying to show off to the girls in his group by asking him if he could “split this hundred” as he laid a hundred dollar bill down. My buddy said “Sure.” and picked it up and tore it in half. The guy was buying him drinks by the end of the night because he and his friends thought it was hilarious. A guy who isn’t as socially intelligent as my buddy might have gotten his ass kicked for that.
Yep. It CAN work to say “wanna fuck?” in the right (very rare) situation, but the vast majority of the time innuendo, like roleplaying, is a way of both of you being able to let eachother know you want to fuck without actually having to confront the “but only sluts and creepy guys want sex!!” stuff.
In PUA terms we call it getting around a girl’s “anti-slut defense”. She knows she’s not coming up to your place to watch a movie or have a cup of coffee, but she can tell herself and her friends later that that was her intention and it “just happened” or it’s your fault, relieving her of the guilt of having to feel like a slut for wanting sex (which is a silly belief to begin with, but again it’s the way we’re conditioned in current society).
If the person is from a sexually open culture, you can get away with being a lot more direct. On the flip side if they’re from a sexually repressed culture you have to use very cheeky/corny innuendo.
I like to use really blatant unapologetic innuendo myself. I do it more for my own amusement than to actually get laid though, haha
- TWTTWN
I think sometimes it’s an attempt at covert subtly for their own little inside joke that fails when their target can read between the lines. Which leads to them to getting the eyebrows of doom.
This is a truly excellent short video that the OP might find an answer in. A brief summary is, in cases of sexual advances, innuendo allows the advance to be made and rejected without necessarily threatening a wider relationship. It is “testing the waters” without jumping in and risking drowning.
The OP can decide whether or not that is cowardly.
I don’t find Innuendo cowardly. It’s one of Queen’s better albums, and if anything, it was brave of Freddie Mercury to keep working on the album as he was sying of AIDS.
That was “The Miracle”
For the record, I think asking someone in for coffee when you want to bang them is a bad idea. It’s not really innuendo at all, unless you waggle your eyebrows or wink or grab their crotch at the same time. I’ve actually had some drinks (not just coffee) at a guys’ place after a first- or second-date dinner before, where the intent was just to drink and watch funny youtube videos or play guitar hero.
Is this a generational gap, or something? Maybe I just don’t watch enough television.
All I know is that chastity flies out the door when sex comes innuendo.
</Groucho>
</SJ Perelman>
hey … i meant innuendo when attacking someone verbally, as opposed to saying "you are a &#(*E&, *#&(*&@# … ".