Where Does The Word Horny Come From

ON Linguistic communication

ON LANGUAGE; The Horny Dilemma

February. vi, 1994

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February half-dozen, 1994

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Toward the cease of "Encounter the Press," where I occasionally come on to shoot the wounded, we were discussing Whitewatergate. David Broder of The Washington Mail service took issue with my suspicions of heavy financial scandal ahead. "If you told me that Bill Clinton was very horny or very ambitious," Mr. Broder opined over the NBC network, "I would have no trouble believing it. If you told me that he was money-hungry and was cutting corners for coin, I'd say that doesn't sound similar the Bill Clinton I know."

When the prove ended, the Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter and columnist looked around and innocently asked, "Can you use a word like horny on television?" The only reply was yes, because he already had. Simply has horny crossed the line from slang to colloquialism, from mild vulgarity to acceptable informal usage?

First, to the roots. Horn tin be traced to the Latin cornu. The proto-Germanic horna bloomed in Old English, in "Beowulf," effectually the year 725. (This scholarly material is being larded in to reassure nervous editors.) The original pregnant referred to the hard protuberances growing from the head of ungulate mammals or mythic creatures like the satyr, a unmerciful being combining a goat (undeservedly vilified as a lecherous beast) and a human being.

The poet James Russell Lowell, extolling the virtues of hard work, wrote in 1843, "Blest are the horny hands of toil!" Hard-working fishermen today prize equally allurement the North American hornyhead chub.

Now to the point. A horn is hard; it is shaft-shaped; since the 15th century, it has been used as a symbol for the male's erect sex organ. "No horn could be stiffer," John Cleland wrote in "Fanny Hill" in 1749; earlier, Shakespeare used the term horn-mad in "Much Ado Almost Nix" and other plays to hateful both "lecherous" and "cuckolded." The nose "horn" of the rhino has long been believed to possess aphrodisiac qualities, which led to the endangerment of the species.

"Hornie is an 18th-century Scottish term for 'devil,' " reports Alan Richter, writer of the 1993 Dictionary of Sexual Slang, "which itself is another old term for penis, dating back to Boccaccio. Robert Burns refers to auld hornie, meaning the devil, and old horny is also a 19th-century term for penis. But plain old horny, meaning 'sexually angry,' only makes its debut at the finish of the 19th century, originally applied exclusively to males." Henry Miller, in his 1949 "Sexus," turned it into an equal-opportunity word with "Her thick, gurgling phonation maxim . . . [ raunchy chip deleted ] 'I'g horny.' "

That brings usa to today: Practice we use horny in everyday spoken communication, along with its Scottish synonym randy, to mean "sexually aroused"? Yes; information technology'south common usage, and it has lost much of its taboo.

Next question: Should we utilize the term in family unit newspapers or on television talk shows? In my opinion, no; common usage is not necessarily good usage, and horny has not lost all its taboo. My colleague Broder defenseless himself, and asked about it. What is natural in dramatic dialogue tin be jarring in more formal soapbox.

Instead of "if you told me he was horny," try "if you told me he played effectually a lot." (In formal paper writing, of form, you could not use play effectually, except in a quotation; you would have to use terms like promiscuous or the fuzzier, less judgmental sexually agile, or if referring to a specific state, sexually aroused.

Relatedly, the word penis appeared a few paragraphs back, and information technology did not bother you. That standard English language word has been thrust into everyday speech by the trials of John and Lorena Bobbitt.

"Her crime," the New York Times editorialist wrote, ". . . serves as permission to say a baldheaded anatomical word in newscasts that Howard Stern only recently appropriated for talk radio." The author didn't demand to use the word, only penis was used in the paper 12 times in the opening weeks of the year, compared with no uses in the same menstruation last year.

Once again unto the breach, dear friends: because I cannot be sure that this piece separating horniness from godliness is going to arrive through the shrieks, groans, hoo-boys and tut-tuts that are office of "the editing process," I might as well go all the way. Here comes more than you need to know nearly the part of the body that daring novelists used to refer to as "his manhood."

The word penis, according to the Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology, is from the Latin penis for "tail" and is cognate with the Greek peos and Sanskrit pasas, from the Indo-European pes-/pos-.

Penis surfaced two years ago in our living rooms in the Clarence Thomas hearings during Anita Loma's testimony, which too necessitated exhaustive etymological enquiry into the slang synonym dong in this space. The word penis resurfaced in Michael Jackson'southward videotape statement defending himself from charges of kid molestation, and became part of life's daily language in the avid coverage of Lorena Bobbitt's trial.

Don't blame the messenger; the articulate, standard, direct way of describing what happened was "she cut off his penis"; only on second reference could it be "an act of sexual mutilation" or "her attempt to remove his manhood."

We have come a long way in a short time, thank you to television, in removing a sense of shame in using the right word. Fourth dimension was, a few courageous parents would eschew all baby-talk terms and accurately identify the function to their children, but to blush furiously when their kids freely used the "clinical" word to other adults.

We've come a ways in journalism, too. In a new book, "My Times," John Corry wrote about a New York Times article on the subject of sex: "It had been decided that my story could remain as information technology was except for one discussion. That was penis. Vagina was adequate, but penis had to be replaced past 'male person sex organ.' "

The times, they are a-changin'. July 13, 1993, will be remembered equally the 24-hour interval the word penis appeared in xxx-point type in The New York Times.

Standard English has no dirty words. The word penis -- severed or reattached, flaccid or erect -- is as innocent, and as usable in polite company, as the hornyhead chub.