Cacāre

Latin obscenity is the profane, indecent, or impolite vocabulary of Latin, and its uses. Words deemed obscene were described as (obscene, lewd, unfit for public use), or (improper, in poor taste, undignified). Documented obscenities occurred rarely in classical Latin literature, limited to certain types of writing such as epigrams, but they are commonly used in the graffiti written on the walls of Pompeii and Herculaneum.

Among the documents of interest in this area is a letter written by Cicero in 45 BC (''ad Fam.'' 9.22) to a friend called Paetus, in which he alludes to a number of obscene words without actually naming them.

Apart from graffiti, the writers who used obscene words most were Catullus and Martial in their shorter poems. Another source is the anonymous '' Priapeia'' (see External links below), a collection of 95 epigrams supposedly written to adorn statues of the fertility god Priapus, whose wooden image was customarily set up to protect orchards against thieves. The earlier poems of Horace also contained some obscenities. However, the satirists Persius and Juvenal, although often describing obscene acts, did so without mentioning the obscene words.

Medical, especially veterinary, texts also use certain anatomical words that, outside of their technical context, might have been considered obscene.

Latin taboo words

Cicero's letter ''ad Fam.'' 9.22

In a letter to one of his friends, written about 45 BC, Cicero discusses a number of obscenities in Latin. It appears that the friend, Lucius Papirius Paetus, (whose letters to Cicero have not been preserved) had used the word ("penis") in one of his letters. Cicero praises him for his forthrightness, which he says conforms to the teachings of the Stoic philosophers, but says that he himself prefers modesty ().

In the letter Cicero alludes to a number of obscene words, without actually mentioning them. The words which he alludes to but avoids are: ("arsehole"), ("penis"), ("cunt"), ("clitoris"), and ("testicles"). He also objects to words which mean "to fuck", as well as to the Latin word "two" because for bilingual speakers it sounds like the Greek () ("he fucks or sodomises"), and also to two words for passing wind, and . He does not object to using the word , and says that , which in his day was obscene, was formerly just a euphemism meaning "tail".

Degrees of obscenity

There thus appear to have been various degrees of obscenity in Latin, with words for anything to do with sex in the most obscene category. These words are strictly avoided in most types of Latin literature; however, they are common in graffiti, and also in certain genres of poetry, such as the short poems known as epigrams, such as those written by Catullus and Martial. The poet Horace also used obscenities in his early poems, that is the '' Epodes'' and the first book of '' Satires'', but later writers of satire such as Juvenal and Persius avoided the coarser words even when discussing obscene topics. There were, however, some occasions in public life, such as in triumphal processions, at weddings, and at certain festivals, where obscenities were traditionally allowed. The purpose of these was presumably twofold, first to ward off the evil eye or potential envy of the gods, and second to promote fertility.

Euphemistic expressions

A very common way of avoiding words for sexual acts was simply to omit the word in question. J.N. Adams collects numerous examples of this. For example, in Horace (''Epodes'' 12.15):

:
::("You are capable of aving sex withInachia three times in a night.")

Another way was to substitute the taboo word with a milder one or a metaphor, for example using ("rump (of an animal)") for or for .

Sometimes the offending word was replaced by a pronoun such as ("that") or an adverb such as ("there"), as in Martial (11.104.16):

:
::("And when the Ithacan was snoring, modest though she was,
    Penelope always kept her hand ''there''.")

: the penis

is the basic Latin word for penis. It is used 48 times in Martial, 26 times in the '' Priapeia'', and 18 times in Pompeian inscriptions. Its status as a basic obscenity is confirmed by the Priapeia 29, in which and are given as ideal examples of obscene words:

:
:: ("May I die if it doesn't shame me
to use obscene and improper words;
but when you, Priapus, as a god, shamelessly
show me your balls hanging out,
it is appropriate for me to speak of cunts and cocks.")

Martial mocks a friend who despised effeminate clothing, explaining why he suspects that he is secretly homosexual:

:
:: ("He will ask why I suspect him to be a 'soft' man.
We go to the baths together. He never looks at anything above,
but examines the athletes with devouring eyes,
and looks at their dicks with constantly moving lips.")

A (the word occurs only in Martial), according to Housman, was a man "who performs feats of strength in public". Rabun Taylor disagrees and sees a more as a kind of rent boy who hung around in the baths in search of patrons.

also frequently appears in the poetry of Catullus. He uses as a nickname for Mamurra, as if it were an ordinary name, as in his epigram 105:

:
:: ("That prick tries to climb the Pimpleian mount (of poetry);
the Muses drive him out with pitchforks.")

( Pimpleia was a place in Pieria in northern Greece associated with the Muses (the nine goddesses of poetry and music).)

Etymology

The etymology of is obscure, although outwardly it would appear to be a diminutive of , gen. , the "mind" (i.e.; "the little mind"). Cicero's letter 9:22 relates it to , a spearmint stalk. Tucker's ''Etymological Dictionary of Latin'' relates it to , "to project outwards", , "chin", and , "a mountain", all of which suggest an Indo-European root *''men-''. Other hypotheses have also been suggested, though none generally accepted.

Synonyms and metaphors

is also a basic Latin obscenity for "penis", in particular for a penis with the foreskin retracted due to erection and glans exposed, as in the illustration of the god Mercury below. As a result, it was "not a neutral technical term, but an emotive and highly offensive word", most commonly used in despective or threatening contexts of violent acts against a fellow male or rival rather than mere sex ( "fucking"). It is found frequently in graffiti of the type (= ) ("Whoever reads this, you're a dickhead").

It is found less frequently in Classical Latin literature, but it does appear in Catullus 28:

:

:: ("O Memmius, while I lay on my back for a long time
you fed me good and slow with that entire beam of yours.
But as far as I can see, you guys have met with the same fate:
for you have been stuffed with a "verpa" no less large!")

Catullus is here speaking metaphorically. He complains that when he accompanied Gaius Memmius, the governor of Bithynia (57-56 BC), as part of his entourage, he was not allowed to make money out of the position. From this poem it is clear that Catullus's friends Veranius and Fabullus were kept under an equally close rein when they accompanied Lucius Piso to his province of Macedonia in 57-55 BC.

By extension, as a masculine adjective or noun, referred to a man whose was exposed by erection or by circumcision; thus Juvenal (14.100) has

:
:: ("To guide only the circumcised .e. Jewsto the fountain that they seek").

And in poem 47 Catullus writes:

:
:: ("Did that unsheathed Priapus prefer you guys
to my little Veranius and Fabullus?")

In Martial's time, it was a common practice for actors and athletes to be fitted with a (a pin or brooch covering the foreskin) to prevent accidental exposure of the , discouraging sex and thereby preserving their voice or strength. Martial (7.81) mocks one such actor as follows:

:
::("Such a big brooch clothes Menophilus's penis
that it is enough for all the comic actors in the world.
I believed (since we often go to the baths together)
that he was anxious to preserve his voice, Flaccus.
But one day, while he was wrestling in the middle of the palaestra with everyone watching,
the poor man's brooch fell off. He was circumcised!")

or

A third word for "penis" was (or ). This is very rare and found only in one line of Horace and a fragment of the satirist Lucilius. The passage in Horace (''Sat.'' 1.2.68) is as follows, in which he advises a young man who was beaten up as a result of an affair with the dictator Sulla's daughter:

:
::("What if, in the words of his penis, his mind were to say to the man when he sees such troubles: 'What exactly do you want? Do I ever demand a cunt descended from a famous consul or veiled in a fancy gown when my passion grows hot?'")

And Lucilius says, referring to the fact that Roman men apparently used to masturbate with their left hand:

:
::("But with his left hand as his girlfriend, he wipes away his ''muttōs tears.")

The word may be related to the marriage deity Mutunus Tutunus.

Although itself is rare, the derivative ("well-endowed") is found twice in Martial, as at 3.73:

:
::("You sleep with well-endowed boys, Phoebus,
and the thing that stands up for them does not stand up for you.")

The derivative , meaning the same as , is found in Lucilius and in two Pompeian graffiti.

The Latin word itself originally meant " tail". Cicero's , 9.22, observes that originally was an innocuous word, but that the meaning of male sexual organ had become primary by his day. The euphemism is used occasionally by Catullus, Persius, Juvenal, and Martial, and even once by the historian Sallust, who writes that the supporters of the anti-government rebel Catiline included

:
::("whatever shameless man, adulterer, or glutton had ruined his ancestral property by hand, stomach, or 'tail'")

Commenting on this passage, St Augustine notes that Sallust's use of the term in this phrase was not offensive. The word did not survive into Romance, however, and occurs only once in a Pompeian inscription.

Juvenal, showing his knack for describing grossly obscene matters without using taboo words, writes as follows in one of his satires (9.43-4):

:
::("Or do you think it is an easy or straightforward thing to drive a proper-sized 'tail'
inside someone's guts and there meet with yesterday's dinner?")

Another euphemism for the penis was ("tail"), which occurs twice in Horace, and continues today in the French derivative ("tail" or "penis"). In one place in his ''Satires'' (''Serm.'' 2.7.50) Horace writes:

:
::("Whichever girl receives the blows of my swelling 'tail',
or when I'm on my back sexily rides my 'horse' with her buttocks,
sends me away neither with a bad reputation nor worried that
a richer or more handsome guy might piss in the same place.")

For the metaphorical use of ("to piss"), see below.

The words ("nerve" or "sinew") and In one of Horace's Epodes (12) a woman boasts of one of her lovers, Coan Amyntas,

:
::("on whose indomitable groin a sinew grows,
    more constant than a new tree clings to the hills.")

or

or , which meant a phallic image or amulet in the form of a penis, were also sometimes used as euphemisms for the penis.

And one of the characters in Petronius's '' Satyricon'', Ascyltus, is described as follows:

:
::("For he had a weight on his groins so big that you'd think the man himself was just an appendage of his phallus.")

or

Yet another euphemism is or or , which literally means the stem or stalk of a plant (such as a cabbage, onion, or vine). This word was used by the satirist Lucilius and by the medical writer Celsus (6.18.2).

In the same passage (6.18.2), Celsus refers to the foreskin as "skin", and to the glans as "acorn". Martial also uses the word in an obscene pun (12.75.3):

:
::("Secundus has buttocks fed with acorns")

The word seems to have been children's slang for the penis; compare English ''pee-pee''. It appears in Martial 11.71:

:
:: ("Natta sucks the pee-pee of his athlete,
compared to whom, Priapus is a eunuch.")

For , see on above. was an emasculated member of the cult of Cybele; according to Taylor (1997), they had much in common with the ''hijras'' of India today.

The penis was compared to a throat or neck in these lines of Martial (9.27.1–2), which mock a philosopher who has plucked the hairs from his private parts with tweezers ():

:
:: ("when you carry around depilated balls, Chrestus,
and a dick just like a vulture's neck")

Similarly Persius in his 4th satire refers to the penis as "neck, gullet". In the following lines he imagines young Alcibiades (or an Alcibiades-like youth) sunbathing in a public bath and comments on the fact that though he now has a full beard on his chin he still "weeds" all the hairs out of his private parts:

:

::("But if after being oiled you take a rest and fix the sun on your skin,
near you there is a stranger to nudge you will his elbow and spit scornfully:
'What morals! To weed one's penis and the secret parts of one's loins
and to display a withered to the public!
And when you comb a balsamed rug on your jaw,
why does a shorn stick out from your groin?
Even though five gym-attendants pluck at that vegetation
and make your boiled buttocks smooth with their curved tweezers,
yet that "bracken" of yours can't be tamed by any plough.' ")

That here means "throat" or "gullet" is supported by a scholiast (early commentator). However, Adams, the expert on Roman sexual vocabulary, prefers the idea that this word is also a by-form of , a grain weevil. Another scholar Wehrle, pointing to the horticultural imagery, thinks the metaphor refers to the larva of a weevil.

The obscure word (gen. ) seems to have meant a sexualized caricature with an abnormally large penis, such as the Romans were known to draw. It appears in Catullus 37:

:
::("I will graffiti the front of the tavern with s")

and in a graffito from Pompeii:

:
::("may you guys eat shit, whoever you are who drew sopios!'")

The grammarian Sacerdos preserves a quotation about Pompey, that says ("whoever is not ashamed, and does not blush, is not a man, but a .") would appear to describe drawings such as that of the god Mercury in the illustration.

Erection

The verb meant "to have an erection". Martial (6.36) in one epigram teases a certain friend:
:
::("Your cock is as big as your nose is long, Papylus, so that you can smell it whenever you get an erection.")

Suetonius's '' Lives of the Twelve Caesars'', quotes a letter from Mark Antony to Augustus which contains the sentence:

:
:: ("Does it make any difference where or in which woman you get hard?")

The participle means 'erect'. Martial describes the habit of a certain girl of weighing a lover's penis in her hand (10.55.1):

:
:
:: ("Whenever Marulla weighs an erect penis in her fingers...")

Martial uses the word ("a hard one") alone to refer to a penis in the following line, mocking a certain Greek philosopher who despite his beard was effeminate (9.47.6):

:
:: ("You enjoy having a hard one in your soft backside")

Another word for "erect" was ("stretched, extended"). Priapus is addressed as in ''Priāpeia'' 81, and as being ("heavy with an extended phallus") in ''Priāpeia'' 79.

An "erection" or "impatience to have sex" was . Horace (''Sat.'' 1.2.116-8) writes:

:...
::("When your groin swells up, then if
a slave girl or home-reared slave boy is available, on whom you can mount an attack
straightaway, do you prefer to burst with the erection?")

Similarly in Priapeia 33.5, the god Priapus says:

:
::("Shameful indeed to do, but so that I don't burst with desire,
I shall put down my sickle and my hand will become my girlfriend.")

An adjective to describe a penis which refused to become erect was . Ovid (''Amōrēs'' 3.7.65-6):

:
::("But my members lay there as if prematurely dead,
   shamefully, more languid than yesterday's rose.")

And a girlfriend of Horace's chides him with the words (''Epodes'' 12):
:
::("You are less languid with Inachia than with me!")

While Catullus (67.23) speaks of an impotent husband in these terms:

:
::("whose little dagger, hanging more flaccid than a tender beet (a vegetable)
never raised itself to the middle of his tunic")

In the Romance languages

has evolved into Sicilian and Italian and South Sardinian . also exists in Spanish. is preserved in some Romance dialects, usually with another meaning; is a sort of stirrup and spur in a Calabrian dialect, possibly named for its shape. Most Romance languages have adopted metaphorical euphemisms as the chief words for the penis; as in Spanish, Portuguese and Italian , obscene for penis, and in Romanian (although is far more common), in Catalan and French , from Latin , "staff", and French ("tail"), from Latin "tail". The Portuguese "penis", first attested in the 10th century, is thought to derive from a Vulgar Latin word "a little stake". The Italian has no obvious Latin ancestor. A number of different suggestions have been made for its origin, but none has yet gained general acceptance.

: the testicles

The basic word for the testicles in Latin was (singular: ). It appears to have had an alternative form * (singular: ), from which the Spanish and other Romance forms are derived. (One late Latin source has the spelling ).

Etymology

The etymology of is obscure. Tucker, without explanation, gives *''qogh-sleǐ-os'' (*''k^wog^h-sley-os?''), and relates it to ''cohum'', an obscure word for "yoke".

Lewis and Short's ''Latin Dictionary'' relates the word to ("a leather sack for liquids"). However, this etymology is not generally accepted today, and according to the the etymology is unknown. In texts, the word for testicles is always spelled with ''col-'' not ''cull-'', and is plural.

Usage

Cicero in his letter discussing obscene Latin words (''ad Fam.'' 9.22) says at one point ("Lanuvian are respectable, but "Cliternian" ones are indecent"). ( Lanuvium and Cliternia were small towns not far from Rome.) However, the meaning of these phrases is not known, according to the .

The word occurs in Petronius graffito quotes a line of iambic verse:

:
::("When an old man lies down, his testicles cover his butthole.")

The form of the line is reminiscent of the proverbial sayings of Publilius Syrus, many of which employ the same metre.

Synonyms and metaphors

The more decent word in Latin for testicles was (sing. ). This word may have derived from the Latin for "witnesses". Cicero's letter says ("In a court of law, ''witnesses'' is a quite decent word; not too much so elsewhere.") Katz (1998) draws attention to the fact that in some cultures it was customary to take a solemn oath while laying hands on the testicles either of a living person (as in Genesis 24:2-4; 47:29-31), or of a sacrificed animal (as described in Demosthenes 23.67f); a similar ritual took place in Umbria when dedicating a sacrificial animal. According to Katz, the word itself appears to be derived from the root ''trityo-'' ("third") and originally meant a third party.

The two meanings of open the door for puns such as the following from Martial (2.72):

:
::("What about the fact that Caecilius has witnesses/testicles, Postumus?")

Or Cicero's ("outstanding witnesses!") in his amusing account of two witnesses hiding naked in a public bathhouse.

The diminutive was entirely confined to the anatomical sense; it is used 33 times by the medical writer Celsus, but not at all. The satirists Persius and Juvenal also used the word . Veterinary writers use both and .

In Catullus (63.5), the testicles are famously referred to as ("weights"), perhaps a metaphor of the weights hung on threads of a loom. The exact words of the text here are disputed, but the general sense is clear:

:
::("He tore off the weights of his groin with a sharp flint")

Ovid ( 2.241) recounting the same story, and perhaps implying that Attis removed the whole organ, similarly uses the phrase ("the burden of his groin").

Other euphemisms are used in other writers. Ovid (''Amōrēs'' 2.3) uses the phrase :

:
::("He who first cut off the genital parts of boys
   ought himself to have suffered the wounds which he made.")

In the Romance languages

is productive in most of the Romance languages: cf. Italian , French ; Portuguese , Galician , Catalan , Sardinian , Romanian , Spanish (now a loanword in English).

''Cunnus'': the vulva

was the basic Latin word for the vulva. The ''Priapeia'' mention it in connection with , above.

Etymology

has a distinguished Indo-European lineage. It is cognate with Persian "anus" and "vulva", and with Greek (''kusthos''). Tucker and de Vaan derive it from an Indo-European ''*kut-nos'' akin to Welsh 'bag, scrotum'. Despite its similarity to "cunt", the '' Oxford English Dictionary'' cautions that the two words may have developed from different roots.

Usage

Cicero's §154 confirms its obscene status. Cicero writes:
:
:: ("We say ("with them"), but we don't say with us' but rather ; because if we said it like that, the letters would run together in a rather obscene way.")

Because the /m/ of assimilates to the /n/ of , sounds very similar to , meaning "in/from/with a cunt twice". A similar euphemism occurs in French: the avoidance of , homophone to (cunt), by the insertion of a superfluous letter: .

Horace, however, uses the word in his Satires () at 1.2.70, and again at 1.3.105:

:
:: ("For even before Helen, the cunt was a most loathsome cause of war")

Martial also uses it freely, for example (3.87):

:
::("Rumour has it, Chione, that you have never been fucked
   and that there is nothing purer than your cunt.
However, you go to the baths without covering the part you should;
   if you have any modesty, transfer your loincloth to your face!")

The following obscene poetic graffito from Pompeii is written in the trochaic septenarius metre:

:
::("A hairy cunt is fucked much better than a smooth one:
at the same time it retains the heat and at the same time it brushes the cock")

The word occurs in literary Latin, most frequently in Martial; it denotes the person who performs the action, not the action itself as in modern English, where it is not obscene but technical. The term comes from the Latin word for the vulva () and the verb "to lick" (, cf. "tongue").

Synonyms and metaphors

These include , "indentation", and , "ditch"; also or "pot".

The modern scientific or polite words ''vulva'' and ''vagina'' both stem from Latin, but originally they had different meanings. The word is the Latin word for scabbard or sword-sheath.

(or ) in classical Latin generally signified the womb, especially in medical writing, and also it is also common in the Vetus Latina (pre-Jerome) version of the Bible. The meanings of and have changed by means of metaphor and metonymy, respectively. Other words for the womb are , (in later Latin), ("belly"), and (also "belly"). At Juvenal 6.129, however, the word is used of the vagina or clitoris of the (allegedly) nymphomaniac empress Messalina, who is described as departing from a session in a brothel:

:
::("still burning with the excitement of her rigid 'volva',
tired out by men but still not satisfied, she departs")

In the Romance languages

is preserved in almost every Romance language: e.g. French , Catalan , Spanish , Galician , Portuguese , (South) Sardinian , Old Italian . In Calabrian dialects the forms (m.) and (f.) are used as synonyms of "stupid, dumb"; the same is true of the French and in fact this has become the primary meaning of the words, both eclipsing the genital sense and significantly reducing the word's obscenity. In Portuguese it has been transferred to the feminine gender; the form is also attested in Pompeian graffiti and in some late Latin texts.

: the clitoris

The ancient Romans had medical knowledge of the clitoris, and their native word for it was . This appears to have been one of the most obscene words in the entire Latin lexicon. It is alluded to, but does not appear, in literary sources, except in the '' Priapeia'' 79, which calls it , the "poor little clitoris". It does, however, appear in graffiti.

Usage

Not even the poets Catullus and Martial, whose frankness is notorious, ever refer to ''landīca''. In a letter to a friend, Cicero discusses which words in Latin are potentially obscene or subject to obscene punning, and there hints at the word by quoting an unintentionally obscene utterance made in the Senate:

:
:: "shall I say that this or that was the greater fault?"

with echoing the forbidden word. Note that the "m" at the end of was pronounced like "n" before the following "d."

The word is found in Roman graffiti: ("I seek Fulvia's clitoris") appears on a leaden projectile found at Perugia left over from the Perusine War, while a derivative word is found in Pompeii: ("Euplia (is) loose and has a large clitoris").

It also occurs in '' Priapeia'' 78.5 (in some versions 79.5), where a girl who has received the attentions of a is described as suffering from ("cracks in her clitoris").

:
:: ("But may the gods and goddesses deny your teeth any food, you who licked the cunt of my neighbouring girlfriend, because of whom this brave girl who has never told a lie, and who used to come running quickly to me, now, poor thing, swears she can hardly walk because of the grooves in her clitoris.")

The word also occurs twice in a medical context in a 5th-6th century Latin translation of Soranus of Ephesus's book on gynaecology.

Fay (1907) suggests one possible etymology as ("a little gland").

Synonyms and metaphors

Martial's epigram 1.90 alludes to a woman who uses her clitoris as a penis in a lesbian encounter, referring to it as her "prodigious Venus":

:
:: ("You dare to rub two cunts together
  and your prodigious Venus pretends to be a man.")

In the Satires of Juvenal it is referred to euphemistically as a ''crista'', "crest" in this line (6.420), describing a lady's massage after an exercise session:

:
:: ("And the cunning masseur presses his fingers on her 'crest'
and causes the top of his mistress's thigh to cry aloud")

In the Romance languages

survived in Old French ''landie'' (extremely rare), and in Romanian
lindic
'.

: the anus

The basic Latin word for the anus was . Though not very common, it occurs in both Catullus and Martial, and is productive in Romance. The word is of uncertain etymology, according to Adams.

Usage

In the texts appears to be used mainly of humans. It was associated with both defecation and with sex. Catullus (23) mocks a certain Furius with these words:
:
::("Because your arsehole is purer than a salt-cellar
and you don't shit even ten times in a whole year,
and the shit is harder than beans and pebbles;
which, if you were to rub it and crumble it with your hands,
you could never dirty your finger")

Martial (2.51) mocks a passive homosexual in these terms:

:
::("Though you often have only one denarius in your whole money-chest,
   Hyllus, and that rubbed smoother than your arsehole,
yet it's not the baker, nor the innkeeper, who will take that away from you,
   but anyone who is proud of his over-sized penis.
Your unlucky stomach looks at the banquets of your arsehole,
   and the former is always hungry, poor thing, while the latter devours.")

In a verse fable of Phaedrus, the word is used of dogs:

:
::("Whenever (a dog) sees a new one coming, he smells its anus.")

The word was synonymous with , "arsehole". This word is thought to be an o-stem version of the same root as "to fart", identifying it as the source of flatulence. Lewis and Short's Dictionary cites only two instances. In an unattractive picture of an old woman Horace (''Epodes'' 8.6) writes:

:
::("And (when) there gapes between your wrinkled buttocks
an ugly arsehole like that of a cow with diarrhoea.")

Juvenal (2.12), writing of outwardly virile but in practice effeminate philosophers, writes:

:
::("Your hairy limbs and the tough bristles along your arms
promise a stern spirit, it's true, but from your smooth arsehole
swollen figs (i.e. piles) are cut out as the doctor laughs.")

The implication is that the piles have been caused by anal sex; that such anal piles or sores are caused by sex is a common theme in the poems of Martial.

Martial uses both and synonymously in the following poem (6.37):

:
::("Of his arsehole cut open right up to his navel
Charimus has no trace left;
and yet he itches right up to his navel.
O, under what great urges the poor man labours!
He has no anus, and yet he's still a fag!")

seems to have been rather a rarer word than . It is not used by Catullus, and only twice by Martial. It is not found in Pompeii, and did not produce derivatives in vulgar Latin or in the Romance languages. The fact that it is used once by Juvenal (who avoided obscene vocabulary) shows that it was less offensive than . In later medical Latin, such as the 5th century Cassius Felix, it could be used as an alternative for .

(not to be confused with "an old woman") corresponds to the English derivative "anus". The word is metaphorical and originally meant "ring". Its anatomical sense drove out its other meanings, and for this reason the diminutive became the usual Latin name for a ring or circle.

The word is common in medical writings. In his book on agriculture, Columella describes how to treat a cow with stomach-ache:

:
::("If any pain remains, trim your nails, insert your oiled hand through its anus and extract the dung.")

It does not seem to have been regarded as an obscenity, and in his letter on different Latin obscene words, Cicero says:

:
::("You call an 'anus' by a name not its own; why not use its own name? If it is something obscene, it should not be referred to even by another name; if it is not, it should be called by its own name.")

In the Latin Bible, the word is used for "haemorrhoids":

:
::("You shall make five golden haemorrhoids.")

In Phaedrus's fable of the dogs who are sent on an embassy to Jupiter, it is used as a synonym of , which occurs later in the same poem:

:
::("Fearing lest something similar might happen again,
they fill the dogs' anus with perfume, and a lot of it.")

An example of the usage of "ring" as a metaphor in a modern Romance language can be found in Brazilian Portuguese slang, in which the word ''anel'' can have the same double meaning, especially in the expression ''o anel de couro'' (the leather ring). "Ring" is also British slang for "anus".

Buttocks

A more seemly Latin word for the backside was (singular ) "buttocks"; this word was generally more decent than , and older, as well: it has several Indo-European cognates. It can be used for the rump of animals as well as humans, and even birds. The word is usually plural but sometimes singular. In the same satire quoted above Juvenal (2.20–21) speaks scathingly of philosophers who have double standards, preaching about virtue but practising vice:
:
::("They speak of virtue
but waggle their rump. 'Am I going to respect you, Sextus, when you behave in such a camp way?'")

Another word for buttocks, slightly less common, was ''natēs'', which is generally used only of the buttocks of humans. It seems to have been a more vulgar or colloquial word than ''clūnēs''. In one of the Priapeia epigrams (22, in some editions 21) the god Priapus threatens potential thieves with punishment as follows:

:
::("If any woman steals (from my garden) or a man or a boy,
the first must provide her cunt, the second his head, the third his buttocks.")

In the Romance languages

has been preserved as meaning the buttocks (rather than the anus) in most Romance languages except for Portuguese, which kept the original semantics. It yields the forms ''culo'' in Spanish and Italian; in French and Catalan it becomes ''cul'', in Romanian ''cur'', in Vegliot Dalmatian ''čol'', in Sardinian and Sicilian ''culu'', in Portuguese ''cu'' and in Galician ''cu''. Its offensiveness varies from one language to another; in French it was incorporated into ordinary words and expressions such as '' culottes'', " breeches", and ''cul-de-sac''.

: to fuck

, infinitive , perfect , supine , Latin for "to fuck", is richly attested and useful.

The etymology of is "obscure". It may be related to "repel, rebut" and , "suppress" or "beat down", and come from a root meaning "beat".

is richly attested in all its forms in Latin literature. In one poem (10.81.1) Martial writes, using the supine:

:
::("When two men came one morning to Phyllis for a fuck...")

Not only the word itself, but also derived words such as , "fucked out, exhausted from sex" ( Catullus 41), (Catullus 29, same meaning), and "to have sex with" (Catullus 37) are attested in Classical Latin literature. The derived noun , "act of intercourse", also exists in Classical Latin, and the , which corresponds to the English epithet "fucker", but lacking the derogatory tone of the English word. The god Priapus says in one poem (''Priapeia'' 63):

:
::("To this (p....) of mine, a girl – I almost added the name –
is accustomed to come with her boyfriend")

It is also used metaphorically in Catullus 6, which speaks of , funds exhausted, literally "fucked away".

, unlike the English word "fuck", was more frequently used in erotic and celebratory senses rather than derogatory ones or insults. A woman of Pompeii wrote the graffito ("I got laid here") and prostitutes, canny at marketing, appear to have written other graffiti complimenting their customers for their sexual prowess:

:
::("Lucky boy, you fuck well");

:
::("Victorious, best wishes to one who fucks well").

It is famously used in Catullus 32:

:
:: ("but you remain at home and prepare for us
nine acts of fucking, one after the other.")

in its active voice was used of women only when it was imagined that they were taking the active role thought appropriate to the male partner by the Romans. The woman in Martial 7.70 is described as a , a lesbian.

:
:: ("Lesbian of all lesbians, Philaenis,
you are right to call the woman you fuck, your 'girlfriend'.")

Other more neutral synonyms for in Latin include , literally "to enter", as in this sentence from Suetonius, supposedly from a letter written by Mark Antony (lover of Queen Cleopatra) to his brother-in-law Octavian (later to become the Emperor Augustus):

:
:: ("What has changed you? Is it because I'm sleeping with the queen? ... So is Drusilla the only woman you sleep with?")

The word , literally "to go with," whence Latin and English '' coitus'', is also used euphemistically for sexual intercourse, but it is not exactly a synonym for . It can be used for both men and women, and also of animals and birds.

Another word found on Pompeian inscriptions was , which appears to be a borrowing from the Greek () "loosen". A Pompeian inscription says ("Dionysius is allowed to fuck whenever he wants to"). The Latin word appears to be used in the same sense in ''Priapeia'' 31: ("these weapons of my belly will relax you" (of ).

Adams (1982) lists a large number of other euphemisms for the sexual act, such as this one from Juvenal (6.126):

:
::("And lying on her back she absorbed the blows of all and sundry")

In the Romance languages

, a core item of the lexicon, lives on in most of the Romance languages, sometimes with its sense somewhat weakened: Catalan ''fotre'', French ''foutre'', Spanish ''joder'', Portuguese ''foder'', Galician ''foder'', Romanian ''fute'' (''futere''), Italian ''fottere''. A famous ribald song in Old Occitan sometimes attributed to the troubadour William IX of Aquitaine reads:
: ''Tant las fotei com auziretz:
Cen e quatre vint et ueit vetz,
Q'a pauc no-i rompei mos corretz
E mos arnes''
:: ("I fucked them as much as you will hear:
a hundred and eighty-eight times.
I most nearly broke my equipment
-- and my tool.")

: to sodomise

The aggressive sense of English "fuck" and "screw" was not strongly attached to ''futuō'' in Latin. Instead, these aggressive connotations attached themselves to ''pēdīcāre'' "to sodomise" and "to force fellatio" respectively, which were used with mock hostility in Catullus 16:

:
:: ("I will bugger and facefuck you,
pervert Aurelius and faggot Furius,
since you thought me indecent
because my poems are somewhat sissified.")

The passive voice, , is used of the person who is forced to submit to anal sex, as in Priapeia 35, in which the god Priapus threatens a thief:

:
::("You will be buggered, thief, on the first offence; but if
you are caught a second time, I will stick it in your mouth.")

There is some doubt in the dictionaries whether the correct spelling was ''ped-'' or ''paed-'' (Lewis and Short give the latter). Bücheler (1915, p. 105) argues that ''ped-'' is correct on the basis of the following epigram in the '' Priapeia'' (no. 67):

:
::("Let the first syllable of 'Penelope' be followed by the first of 'Dido',
   and the first of 'Cadmus' by the first of 'Remus',
and what comes out of them is what you will pay to me if you are caught in the garden,
   thief; it is with this penalty you must pay for your crime.")

and (noun)

The word ("buggerer") is used in a poem by Catullus's friend the orator Licinius Calvus quoted by Suetonius (''Caesar'' 49), in which the King of Bithynia is referred to as ("the buggerer of Caesar"), referring to a rumour that in his youth Julius Caesar had had an affair with king Nicomedes.

Martial on the other hand preferred to use the shorter form or , of the same meaning, for example at 11.87:

:
:: ("Once you were rich; but in those days you were a ''pēdīco'',
   and for a long time no woman was known to you.
Now you chase after old women. O the things that poverty forces one to do!
   That woman is making a fucker out of you, Charidemus!")

The activities of a are hinted at in the following lines of Martial (12.85):

:
:: ("You say that buggerers' mouths stink.
If this is true as you say, Fabullus,
what do you think the mouth of pussy-lickers smells of?")

The various distinctions in sexual activity are made clear in the following poem of Martial (2.28):

:
:: ("Laugh a lot, Sextillus, if anyone calls you effeminate (''cinaedus''),
   and show him your middle finger;
but you're also neither a buggerer (''pēdīco'') nor a fucker (''futūtor''),
   nor does the hot mouth of Vetustina please you.
You're none of those, I admit, Sextillus, so what are you?
   I don't know, but ''you'' know there are only two other possibilities!")

The fourth line rules out Sextillus as an ; the two remaining possibilities were in Roman eyes the most degrading, that he was either a or a .

Etymology

is often thought to be a Greek loanword in Latin (from the noun (''paidika'') "boyfriend"), but the long "i" is an obstacle. Bücheler (1915, p. 105), who rejects this etymology, suggests there may be a connection to and .

In Romance

Unlike , the word has no reflexes in Romance. The French slang word '' pédé'' ("male homosexual") is an abbreviated form of ''pédéraste'', according to the '' Dictionnaire historique de la langue française''.

and : oral sex

: to make suck

, which in English is denoted by the passive construction "to be sucked", is an active verb in Latin, since the was considered to be the active partner, the ''fellātor'' the passive. is the counterpart of ; in Roman terms, which are the opposite way round to modern conceptions, the giver of oral sex inserts his penis into the mouth of the receiver.

To be forced to submit to oral sex was apparently a worse punishment than to be sodomised. Martial (2.47) advises one effeminate man who is having an adulterous affair, and who would not perhaps have objected too much if the husband punished him by sodomising him:

:
::("Do you rely on your buttocks (to avoid a worse punishment)? Your girlfriend's husband is not a sodomiser.
   He does two things only: puts it in your mouth or screws women.")

According to Adams (1982, p. 126-7), it was a standard joke to speak of as a means of silencing someone. Martial (3.96) writes:

:
::("You gossip like an adulterer and a womaniser;
but if I catch you, Gargilius, you will be quiet!")

was seen as a hostile act that enemies might inflict on one. An inscription says:

:
::("I would prefer my friends to suck me than that my enemies make me suck them.")

It is also a standard threat made by the god Priapus, protector of orchards, to potential adult male thieves, as in '' Priapeia'' 13:

:
::("You will be thoroughly 'cut', boy, I warn you; girl, you will be fucked;
   for the bearded thief, a third penalty awaits.")

: to suck

The word originally had an innocent sense, meaning to suck the teat or to suck milk, but in classical times the sexual sense was predominant. The verb ''fellō'' and the nouns and (less often) the feminine are common in graffiti, and the first two also occur several times in Martial's epigrams. The practice was thought particularly degrading for a man, and Martial, mocking a certain masculine lesbian, writes (7.67):

:
::("She does not suck cocks – she thinks this not masculine enough –
but absolutely devours the middle parts of girls.")

was generally used absolutely, without an object. A Pompeian wall inscription says ("Myrtis, you suck well"), and another says ("Romula does fellatio with her boyfriend here and everywhere").

leaves little trace in Romance languages, being replaced by ("to suck") and its derivatives. Though it is not represented by descendants, it is represented by learned borrowings such as the French ''fellation''.

and : to lick

The verb ("I lick") was common in both sexual and non-sexual contexts. As a sexual term, it could have , , or as its object. Martial (3.96) writes:

:
::("You lick my girlfriend, you don't fuck her;
and you boast about it as if you were an adulterer and a fucker.
But if I catch you, Gargilius, you'll shut up!")

Its synonym was also sometimes used in a sexual sense. Martial (3.81) criticises a eunuch who presumed to have oral sex with women:

:
::("That tongue of yours ought to be licking the middle parts of men (not women)")

: to "peel"

"to take the bark off", "peel" and "to take the husk off", "to skin, flay" are famously used in a sexual sense in two places in Latin literature by Catullus and Ausonius. It has been argued that the meaning is to pull back a man's foreskin, in order to masturbate him. Ausonius (''Ep.'' 71), after mentioning various perversions (), says:

:
::("Crispa, however, practices all the perversions in one body:
she 'peels', she sucks, she puts it in either hole,
lest she leave anything untried before she dies.")

What seems to shock Ausonius is that Crispa actively enjoyed taking an active role in such practices rather than passively submitting to male desires as was the norm.

The other sexual use of this word is in Catullus (57), who says in a moment of bitterness:

:
::(" Caelius, our Lesbia, that Lesbia,
that one woman whom Catullus
loved more than himself and all his dear ones
now on crossroads and in alleys
'peels' the grandsons of magnanimous Remus.")

Some, noting that in Italian the phrases ''cavar la pelle'', ''scorticare'' ("debark") can mean "strip someone of their money", and similar uses of ("to shear") and ("to skin") in Latin, have argued that Catullus is also using the word in a non-sexual sense; that is, Lesbia is acting like a prostitute and fleecing the spendthrift Roman young men () of their money.

and : to waggle

() and ( etc.) are basic Latin obscenities that have no exact English equivalents. referred to the actions of the female partner in sexual intercourse (i.e. grinding or riding on a penis); as, similarly to the case in English, , which is often translated "fuck", primarily referred to the male action (i.e. thrusting, pounding, slamming). referred to the similar activity of the passive partner in anal sex.

Etymology

Both of these verbs are of fairly obscure origin.

Unlike some of the vocabulary of homosexuality in Latin (, ), seems not to be of Greek origin. Francis A. Wood relates it to an Indo-European root *''k^weu-'' or *''qeu-'', relating to a variety of back and forth motions.

Usage

always refers to a male taking the bottom role in anal sex. Martial 3.95 contains the phrase:

:
::("But you get buggered and you wiggle your arse so prettily, Naevolus.")

appears to have had a similar meaning, but to have been used of the female. Martial writes of a Spanish dancing-girl (who he suggests would make a suitable present for someone):

:
:: ("She waggles so tremulously, she arouses so charmingly, that she has made Hippolytus himself into a masturbator")

Again Martial 10.68:

:
:: ("Could you possibly be prettier as you grind? You learn easily, and could do everything they do in Corinth; but you'll never quite be Lais, Laelia.")

Lais was a famous prostitute or courtesan, and Corinth was the site of a major temple of Aphrodite; the temple employed more than a thousand cult prostitutes.

Synonyms and metaphors

These words have few synonyms or metaphors, and belong almost to a sort of technical vocabulary.

In the Romance languages

Both words seem to have been lost in Romance.

: to masturbate

This word is found twice in the poet Martial, but apparently not in earlier writers. Martial writes in one poem (11.104):
:
::("The Phrygian slaves used to masturbate behind the doors
   whenever Hector's wife sat on her husband's 'horse'.")

The word also occurs. In 14.203 Martial writes of a Spanish girl from Gādēs ( Cádiz):
:
::("She wiggles so sexily and itches for it so charmingly
   that she would have made a masturbator out of Hippolytus himself!")

Hippolytus was famous in mythology for his chastity, and for refusing the advances of his stepmother, Phaedra.

Etymology

Lewis and Short suggest that the word may be derived from "to defile oneself with a hand", and this is the usual view, and supported ("with some hesitation") by J.N. Adams. Another view, however, is that it comes from * + ("to excite the penis"), assuming an otherwise unattested meaning of "penis" for ("male"). The supporters of this view cite another word (from ), which occurs once in Latin literature in Petronius (134.5), and which appears from the context to mean "beating the penis with a wand (to stimulate it)". It is argued that in this word, the element ''mās-'' may be the same as in . Yet another proposed etymology is that the element ''masturb-'' derives from a Proto-Indo-European root *''mostrgh-'' meaning "brain, marrow", and hence "semen".

Synonyms and euphemisms

Martial (9.41) criticises a Roman gentleman for masturbating, using the phrase:

:
::("you use your left hand as a concubine and your hand serves Venus as your girlfriend")

The hand used for masturbating by the Romans was evidently the left one, as Martial 11.73 confirms. (Compare also the fragment of the satirist Lucilius quoted above in the section on .)

In another poem (11.22) Martial advises a friend:

:
::("do at least cease from troubling your groins with copulating hand").

He continues:

:
::("In smooth-skinned boys this (i.e their hand) sins more than their cock,
   and their fingers hasten the process of turning them into a man.")

This apparently dates back to a belief of Aristotle that vigorous sexual activity caused a boy's voice to turn rapidly into that of a man.

In another poem (2.43), however, Martial admits that he himself for want of a sexual partner sometimes resorts to the practice:

:
::("but as for me, my hand has to serve instead of Ganymede").

In another (11.46), addressed to a man who finds it difficult in middle age to get an erection, Martial uses the word ("I shove" or "prod") to signify masturbation:

:
::("and your shrivelled dick is prodded by your fingers until they get tired,
   but doesn't raise its worn out head even when provoked").

The frequentative form of is ("to thrust or shove repeatedly"). This occurs in only one place, in Catullus 56:

:
:: ("Recently I caught the ward of my girlfriend
'thrusting'; this boy, if it please Dione,
using my 'hard one' as a weapon, I 'cut'.")

The meaning of here is disputed. "Masturbating" was the interpretation of A. E. Housman; he also wanted to read as with the meaning "there and then". Others, however, understand Catullus to mean that the boy was caught having sex with a girl; in which case, probably means "in a threesome", since a , according to the agricultural writer Cato the Elder, was a team of three oxen pulling a plough. Uden (2007) translates: "I just caught a kid banging his girlfriend", explaining that is a derogatory diminutive.

The verb (literally "to cut" or "kill") is used as slang for homosexual penetration elsewhere in Latin literature, such as at ''Priapeia'' 26.10, a poem in which Priapus boasts that in his earlier days ("I used to 'cut' (i.e. sodomise) thieves, however strong they were"). Dione, was the mother of Aphrodite (Venus), goddess of love; but the term was also used in poetry for Venus herself.

: to defecate

was the chief Latin word for defecation.

Etymology

The word has a distinguished Indo-European parentage, which may perhaps relate to nursery words or children's slang that tends to recur across many different cultures. It would appear to be cognate with the Greek noun , ''kopros'', meaning "excrement" (hence, coprophilia). It also exists in Germanic; in German, Swedish (''kack''), Scots (as both noun and verb, ''cack'' or ''cackie'', the diminutive), whilst English "poppiecock" derives from Dutch ''pappe kak'', " diarrhea". It exists in Turkish (kaka), Irish and Scottish Gaelic (''cac''), Hebrew, Arabic dialects, Hungarian (kaka), Ukrainian (''какати''), Russian, Lithuanian and Persian/Isfahani accent (''keke''). In British English, "caca" is occasionally used as childish slang for excrement (similar to American English "poop"), a word whose level of obscene loading varies from country to country; whilst in Scotland and in Ireland, "cack" is occasionally used either as a mild interjection, or as an impolite adjective to mean of poor quality, broken, nonsense. It also exists as a loan in Finnish (''kakka''). The derivatives of this Latin word appear in Spanish, Catalan, Portuguese, Italian (''cacca''), Romanian, and French.
Also, in Slavic languages: ''kakati''.

Usage

The verb is usually used intransitively. Martial (1.92.11) says:
:
::("not your arsehole, for something that never shits isn't an arsehole")

However, in the phrase below, from Catullus 36, it is transitive:
:
:: ("Volusius's ''Annals'', paper covered in shit")

The prefixed form is transitive. Seneca describes the Emperor Claudius's final words, spoken after farting loudly:

:
:: ("His last saying heard among mortals was the following, after he had let out a rather loud sound from that part with which he spoke more easily: 'O no, I think I've shat myself!' Whether he did or not, I don't know. He certainly shat on everything else.")

Synonyms and metaphors

Few synonyms are attested in Classical Latin, apart from a word , attested by the grammarian Festus (but nowhere else) in the meaning . The word comes much later.

A euphemism which occurs in Petronius

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