I am of the opinion that if an audience or listener is constantly chortling over unintentional sexual double entendres - such as treating “she was coming” as “she was cumming” - that, at a certain point, the fault lies more with the audience than the speaker.
Yes, speakers need to be aware of vocabulary and keep up to date on its unintended meanings, but oftentimes, it’s not so much the speaker’s fault as it is that some listeners are deliberately intent on hearing double entendres where nothing sexual or bad was intended. They’re TRYING to hear things in as bad a way as possible.
I think that in many (most?) cases, it’s not that the listeners are deliberately trying to hear the sexual meaning, but out of habit or conditioning or for whatever other reason, that’s the one that their (subconscious?) brain chooses to focus on.
Oftentimes? You must live a much different life than me. I don’t think I’ve ever experienced a situation where an “audience” were picking up double entendres at a frequency that was worthy of more than a moment’s irritation.
On the one hand, the verb “come” is ubiquitous, and probably the best most succinct verb choice for lots of sentences.
On the other hand, if I was going to write a speech or presentation, I’d avoid using it.
It may not be my “fault” that some percentage of an audience would snicker at hearing “the guests came more quickly than expected, so we had to do some last-minute cleaning,” but it would be my lack of understanding or awareness that lead to it, for sure.
I think that the come/cum homonym is common enough that it counts as a writer’s error (or choice) to keep it in certain phrases. I’m sure there are plenty of other homonyms that are less common or obvious, and that I wouldn’t necessarily think the writer was asleep on the job for including.
Audience. When I’m speaking I’m just trying to convey a thought. If the naughty version of what I just said is off topic, then that’s not what I meant and you need to grow up. HOWEVER, if I accompany the questionable phrase with a winky sort of look or atypically stressed syllable, maybe a pause, then chances are I’m trying to get you to pick up on the naughty. But I’d be hesitant to call out a double entendre without an obvious clue from the speaker that it was intended.
There’s a British comic named Jimmy Carr. He does standup and hosts a few different comedy panel shows. His reputation for innuendo and outright sleaze is so bad that the following exchange happened on one of those panel shows.
Female panelist: I may be getting a notice from the town council [town government] about having an awful junky garden [yard].
Jimmy Carr, quite seriously: Really? I would have imagined that your garden was quite well kept.*
Audience roars in laughter. I believe he honestly didn’t mean anything by it, but it was his reputation that caused the reaction at least as much as the audience’s proclivity to snicker.
So my answer is both, and it depends on the speaker.
*“garden” as metaphor for pubes, just in case anyone didn’t get it.