I need a term for sex between a husband and wife that would sound appropriate for a journal written by a 19th century Irish noblewoman. She’s writing that her man isn’t exercising his ‘husbandly privilege’ or something to that effect. Any ideas? It doesn’t need to be completely accurate historically. It mostly just needs to sound good.
I don’t know what the phrase would be, but there is a dictionary-stlye book called “Depraved English” that is chock-full of what you are looking for.
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*Originally posted by AHadley *
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And whyyyy am I unable to edit myself, Hmmmm??
Tending the fields
Exploring the wilderness
Plunging his sword into the wild beast, scabbard and all
Having his cup runeth over
Being the horse to Catherine the Great
Riding bareback through the stables
A pirate’s invasion
Solving the potato famine
Turning the queen into a commoner
‘Marital Duties’
how about revealing himself before the lord?
some old writer guy - i forget who, but the name started with an f, or a k, or else it was the guy who wrote ‘the story of o’ (or something like that) - used it to say that when his characters were getting naked.
but since i guess you need a metaphor for sex, it doesnt help you at all.
maybe you could use it in conjunction with one of the metaphors supplied by enderw23.[assume victorian tone of voice] “julia was distraught over the fact that clifford’s cup no longer ran over when she revealed herself before the lord. she feared that he was making his cup run over himself, which would have explained why his right hand always smelled like baby lotion.”
they probably didnt have baby lotion back then, though.
sigh…
I think all these euphemisms were current in the 19th century (except perhaps the last):
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to sleep with
to make love
to have relations
to lie with
to keep the marriage bed
to keep company with**
Another word, swive was commonly used to mean “to copulate with”, but I don’t know if it was still current in the 19th century.
Remember, the act is not complete until the woman is “spent.”
conjugal right?
A quick handshake in the dark. Or a slow handshake, depending on the couple.
Now, now, I thought you’d know better than that, **Enderw23.
We went with ‘marital duties’. I like the idea of making it sound like a chore. Thanks for the suggestions.
AHadley, the image tag is turned off primarily because we had a lot of problems with bandwidth stealing. As for editing or deleting your posts, it would be nice, but it would give troublemakers way too much power. If you have something that really needs editing, you can drop an e-mail to the moderator of the forum (myself or manhattan here in GQ), and we’ll do it for you.