Zompist Bboard Again

How about a thread discussing metaphor related to all things sexual? That is, both non-sexual metaphors for sexual things, and sexual metaphors for non-sexual things. I mean "metaphor" in a very broad sense here.

Non-sexual metaphors for sexual things are, of course, very common, because people in some cultural like to talk about sex and related things without being too direct about it. You might be able to think of a lot of examples in various languages yourself.

The first example I can think of, although it's so thoroughly associated with sex by now that there are probably few people who still think of it as a metaphor, is one of the most common German slang words for having sex with someone: "vögeln", which translates literally as "birding" or "to bird". That might give you some idea of how people in the past used to get their sex education.

Sexual metaphors for non-sexual things might be less common, although in English there are, of course, the various variations of "to screw someone over" for "to cheat someone" or "to cause someone harm". One German example I can think of is "miteinander unter einer Decke stecken", literally "to be with one another under one sheet", which means basically "to be in cahoots with one another".

What other examples can you think of? Any thoughts?

Using metaphors to talk about sex,
allows us to reinforce the Judeo-Christian taboos,
at the foundation of our Western societies...

Conversely, using sexual metaphors for anything else,
allows us to stigmatize or dominate,
through insulting language...

Could sex-haters like xxx please stay out of this thread?

xxx sex-hater

The male and female ends of electrical cords.

"X sucks" is one of these, which has been bleached to the point that few (to my knowledge) think much of its etymology.

Travis B. wrote: ↑Sun Dec 21, 2025 4:54 pm "X sucks" is one of these, which has been bleached to the point that few (to my knowledge) think much of its etymology.

IIRC “X blows” has similar origins.

in french faire=foutre (to do = to fuck)...
qu'est ce qu'elle fout (what does she fuck...)

Man in Space wrote: ↑Sun Dec 21, 2025 4:31 pm The male and female ends of electrical cords.

I worked for a period of time at a manufacturing job which involved handling a lot of male and female connectors, screws, gaskets, hoses, pipes, etc. It's not like I wasn't aware of this on an intellectual level, beforehand, but the job reminded me of how many slang terms and metaphorical expressions there are which have their origins in the manufacturing environment and the workbenches of the mechanically inclined hobbyist.

Man in Space wrote: ↑Sun Dec 21, 2025 9:55 pm

Travis B. wrote: ↑Sun Dec 21, 2025 4:54 pm "X sucks" is one of these, which has been bleached to the point that few (to my knowledge) think much of its etymology.

IIRC “X blows” has similar origins.

Does anyone have a handy link to studies on the popularity over time of these terms? I am aware, as an adult, of their origin but my gut thinks of 'it sucks' as being less sexual than 'it blows' when I am not consciously thinking about the origins. I think I was allowed to say the first when under the age of 10 but suspected that my parents/teachers would disapprove of the second, once I became aware of the term.

In some regions of France(Southwest), “putain”(whore) was used as a comma and “con”(cunt) as a period...
(in Marseile the period was more often "enculé" (got fucked))

The Tocharian reflex of IE *yebh-, yäp-, means "to enter", while cognates in all other daughters mean "to fuck" (Greek οἴφω, Sanskrit yábhati, Russian ебать). Is it an archaism, or an hyperbole on the model of French foutre (which is rarely used in its original sense anymore at least in my generation)?

Vilike wrote: ↑Tue Dec 23, 2025 3:30 pm The Tocharian reflex of IE *yebh-, yäp-, means "to enter", while cognates in all other daughters mean "to fuck" (Greek οἴφω, Sanskrit yábhati, Russian ебать). Is it an archaism, or an hyperbole on the model of French foutre (which is rarely used in its original sense anymore at least in my generation)?

Hm, now I wonder: Given that Tocharian is, you know, extinct, and has been for a while, can we be sure that the scholars who deciphered it got the meaning of this particular word right? Long ago, I read an article somewhere (though a journalistic one, not a scholarly one), which claimed that back in the days before the Sexual Revolution had reached the parts of Academia concerned with studying Classical Antiquity, classicists were sometimes pretty euphemistic when they translated certain passages from surviving ancient Latin texts.

I seem to recall "risqué" glosses being supplied in Latin in otherwise vernacular translations, and the definitions of some words being vague in dictionaries like the Bailly, like φοινικίζω "to have the obscene mores of the Phoenicians" (it means "to have oral sex"), but Tocharian languages have been discovered relatively recently and have a comfortable corpus of texts. I haven't verified yet, but since modern indo-Europeanists still ponder the question of yäp-, it looks like the contexts where found were sufficiently clear.

Thank you!

Speaking of Tocharian I know there's conjecture that Germanic "wife" (ie. "woman") goes back to PIE and is cognate for the Tocharian word for "vulva", but I don't know how well-established that is.

So Haleza Grise wrote: ↑Tue Dec 23, 2025 6:33 pm Speaking of Tocharian I know there's conjecture that Germanic "wife" (ie. "woman") goes back to PIE and is cognate for the Tocharian word for "vulva", but I don't know how well-established that is.

zompist wrote in (I think, correct me if I’m wrong) the MECK that the Sumerian cuneiform symbol for “girl” was a graphical representation thereof.

munus=woman

Vilike wrote: ↑Tue Dec 23, 2025 4:47 pm I seem to recall "risqué" glosses being supplied in Latin in otherwise vernacular translations, and the definitions of some words being vague in dictionaries like the Bailly, like φοινικίζω "to have the obscene mores of the Phoenicians" (it means "to have oral sex"), but Tocharian languages have been discovered relatively recently and have a comfortable corpus of texts. I haven't verified yet, but since modern indo-Europeanists still ponder the question of yäp-, it looks like the contexts where found were sufficiently clear.

In Spanish, "cubana" as a noun refers to a titjob i.e. mammary intercourse (Wiktionary says it's specific to Spain, but IME I've also encountered it from Latin Americans...). I can only imagine a Spanish-English dictionary defining it as "obscene act characteristic of the Cubans".

Kuchigakatai wrote: ↑Wed Dec 24, 2025 3:55 pm (Wiktionary says it's specific to Spain, but IME I've also encountered it from Latin Americans...).

Even from Cubans?

xxx wrote: ↑Tue Dec 23, 2025 7:28 am In some regions of France(Southwest), “putain”(whore) was used as a comma and “con”(cunt) as a period...
(in Marseile the period was more often "enculé" (got fucked))

Oh, I'd say putain is punctuation more or less everywhere in France, though with more enthusiasm in the South, of course.
There's also the ahem, creative, pute vierge and pute borgne ('virgin whore' and 'one-eyed whore') which I think can be traced to Languedoc?
In the Southeast (Rhône valley), you can also here 'oh con' as an expression of surprise.

Interestingly, con (cunt, stupid, fucking idiot) is no longer used in its original sense, except in literary works. Neither is foutre -- which can mean 'do', 'damage, destroy', 'on est foutus' ~ 'we're fucked'; the current words for fuck are baiser and niquer, which can also be used in the metaphorical sense.

Sometimes you'll hear that two pieces fit together 'comme papa dans maman', ie as daddy into mommy, ie perfectly.

My favourite metaphor for sexual intercourse is la bête à deux dos, 'the beast with two backs' -- also found in Shakespeare, who may have borrowed it from Rabelais.

I've often wondered why European French uses sex-related swearwords, whereas the Quebecois go for religious words; but I never found a satisfying explanation. This might be recent. "Nom de Dieu" feels quaint now, but it was still relatively serious in the early 20th century.