More old timey words that describe the sexual experience far better than our modern words ever could.
In January 2011 I did a list of 11 Amazing Antiquated Sexual Terms That Need To Be Brought Back. Since then… none of them has been brought back, not even a little. I have not used any of them since, not even once. And how can they come back if their evangelist doesn’t even use them? I’m not a do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do type. I’m a do-as-I-do-say-you-say-me type.
Recently, I had a dream. I had an awesome dream. It was to find 11 more antiquated sexual terms and bring them back. And we could all use them all day long as we party, karamu, fiesta forever and dance on the ceiling.
Here are 11 more amazing antiquated sexual terms. All of these are from the early 1800s and I pledge to start using them at least semi-regularly in my daily life. Because hello, these are the words I’ve been looking for.
1 | backgammon player
a man who has gay sex
Another early 1800s term was “gentleman of the back door,” but I think “backgammon player” is a better euphemism because it’s juuuust slightly more veiled. It’s like when a gossip website wants to spread a rumor about a celebrity but doesn’t use their name, so they give a clue that only 99.9999 percent of people would get (“What gladiator of an actor isn’t keeping things confidential when he crows about his sexual conquests?” and such).
2 | lobcock
a large, unerect penis
That’s only the first definition. The second definition is… a lazy person. And a lazy person is essentially the same as that large penis: useless, going to waste and clearly not Jewish.
3 | bastardly gullion
the bastard son of a bastard
Everything I learned in math would make me think that when you multiply a bastard by a bastard it should cancel out and the product should be not a bastard.
4 | dog’s rig
to have sex until you’re tired, then turn and run the other way
Just like the dog you are — too tired to keep having sex, not too tired to think up an excuse more elaborate than Game of Thrones AND run the equivalent of a 5K to get out of there.
5 | Frenchified
infected with venereal disease
I love that even 200 years ago they were all about blaming STDs on the French. Why don’t we still do this? And if we still used this term today, would we have wanted to update it to Freedomified?
6 | playing at rantum-scantum
having sex
Rantum-scantum is defined as “careless” or “disorderly,” so this whole phrase is like a centuries-old version of the modern “fooling around.” Only it sounds way cooler, it rhymes, it’s vaguely onomatopoetic, and it would make you laugh way harder if someone tried to say it in the sexiest way possible during dirty talk.
7 | fartleberries
excrement hanging from the anus
One of the old dictionaries I used to compile this list actually had both dingleberries and fartleberries as options to describe these. Since people today still say dingleberries and not fartleberries… how did it win? Dingleberries versus fartleberries must’ve been the VHS vs. Beta battle of like 1815. I wouldn’t be surprised if blood were shed.
8 | to blow the grounsils
to have sex on the floor
This is a far more flattering way to describe floor sex than today’s way — “We did it on the floor because the squeaking bed would’ve woken up my roommate/my parents/our children/the rest of the convent.”
9 | rantallion
a person whose scrotum is so relaxed it hangs lower than his penis
I’m thinking this was less of a sexual term and more of a term to describe someone achieving inner peace. Like, your moment of nirvana only arrives when you’re finally so at ease that your testicles can finally relax too. Or it was just a term made up by older men to justify why the pendulum had finally swung in such an unflattering direction.
10 | public ledger
a prostitute
They called a prostitute the public ledger because… she’s open to all parties. That’s both sexist AND clever! Our more recent twist on that is the “village bicycle” — everybody gets a ride. I feel like that could use another modern rebooting though… what about “She’s the Denny’s Baconalia menu — everybody gets their pork” or “She’s a Twitter hashtag — everybody’s using her, including a ton of black guys”?
That’s horrible.
11 | Carvel’s ring
a woman’s genitalia
So as I’m understanding it, this term comes from the legend of a doctor named Ham Carvel. He was jealous of other men looking at his wife and one night he dreamed that the devil gave him a ring — as long as he wore it, no other man would ever be able to have sex with his wife. He woke up and his finger didn’t have that ring on it… it was inserted into his wife. And that’s how the term was born. Whatever. “Carvel’s ring” made ME think of ice cream.