
Glossary of censored words from a 1919 treatise on love - pepys
https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/glossary-of-censored-words-from-a-1919-book-on-love
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thaumasiotes
Is "cohabitate" used here as an English-English euphemism for sex? It seems so
unnecessary given the franker glosses of "to ravish" / "copulation" / "sexual
intercourse" / "coition"... but it's given as the gloss for "coire" and
"coitus" ("going together"; same thing as "coition"), for "commiscor", which
is just the passive of "commisco" ("to copulate"), _and_ for "concumbo" /
"concubitus" ("lying together").

And then an adjective derived from "concubitus", concubitalis", is glossed as
"copulative".

~~~
e40
Unnecessary or not, it's my experience it means "living with someone who you
are having sex with" and has my whole life.

~~~
thaumasiotes
But the glossary strongly implies that there's no meaning to "cohabitate"
beyond "have sex", which I find very strange. There is not a single suggestion
that "cohabitation" says anything about where you live or with whom.

And I'm asking why "have sex" needs to be euphemised in the glosses for coire
/ coitus / commiscor / concumbo / concubitus, when it doesn't for concarnatio
/ commisco / concubitalis / conjugatio / etc. etc. etc.

~~~
lnanek2
Why do you think the glossary implies that? The glossary has "to copulate"
plenty of places, so if the author thought cohabitation only meant copulation,
they'd just put "to copulate" wouldn't they? It doesn't, it says the
cohabitation ones mean cohabitation. So that's living together, not just
having sex together.

Note that in certain religions, unmarried girls and guys aren't even allowed
in a room alone with each other without a chaperone. Even today I hear lots of
religious girls refuse to move in with someone until marriage. So living
together even without any mention of sex is considered scandalous to certain
people of certain times - thus requiring censoring in a 1919 treatise.

Heck, even in modern times, a block away from me, there's a mediation center
where the guys and girls all have to sit on opposite sides of the building
even though no one is having sex at a meditation center, and what the girls
are allowed to wear is tightly restricted.

~~~
thaumasiotes
> Why do you think the glossary implies that?

Because I am at least as familiar with Latin as the intended audience of the
glossary. I detailed my objections in my root comment. Why don't I repeat
them:

1\. "Commisco" and "commiscor" are the active and passive forms of the same
verb. This glossary has the active form meaning "copulate" and the passive
meaning not "get screwed" but rather "cohabit". This is not a verb with
different senses in the active and passive. (I'm assuming that the glossary's
"commisco" is actually commisceo; for examples of verbs that _are_ different
in their active and passive senses, see video, where the active means "see"
and the passive commonly means "appear [to be a certain way]", or facio, where
the passive fio is so special that it is morphologically not even passive.)

2\. "Concumbo", "concubitus", and "concubitalis" are, respectively, a verb
[literally "lie with"], a noun derived from that verb, and an adjective
derived from the noun. This glossary gives the verb as "cohabitate", the noun
as "cohabitation", and the adjective, somehow, as "copulative".

Here's the Lewis and Short dictionary entry for "concubitus":
[http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%...](http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.04.0059%3Aentry%3Dconcubitus)
. I'll repeat it here:

> I. A lying together; reclining; a firm, close shutting together (of the
> teeth).

> II. Copulation, coition.

These are explicitly sexual words.

3\. "Congressus" is glossed explicitly as "coition", immediately implying that
the author and audience are both aware of the meaning of the word "coition".
But "coire" and "coitus" are glossed as "to cohabit" and "cohabitation",
despite the fact that these are not legitimate meanings of the Latin words.
They refer to sexual intercourse. (Since they literally mean "go[ing]
together", they have all kinds of other senses, such as entering into
contracts. Cohabitation is not mentioned. See
[http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%...](http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.04.0059%3Aentry%3Dcoeo)
)

> The glossary has "to copulate" plenty of places, so if the author thought
> cohabitation only meant copulation, they'd just put "to copulate" wouldn't
> they?

Yes, this is very strange, as I said above. This is what I'm asking about.

> It doesn't, it says the cohabitation ones mean cohabitation. So that's
> living together, not just having sex together.

This conclusion cannot stand. The Latin words glossed as "cohabitation" do not
generally have that meaning (concumbo does seem to offer it, though the
primary sense is obviously just "have sex"), and the glossary frequently
glosses _different forms of the same word_ as "copulation" in one place and
"cohabitation" in another place.

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partomniscient
I'm not sure how you can interpret this as censorship as opposed to different
levels of understanding the meaning of latin words? The intended audience
pushed back wanting an improved simplicity in understanding to improve
readability for them.

The word censorship is only in the title of the article.

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aasasd
Ah, perhaps Mr. Talmey wished to evade the fate that quite soon befell upon
Joyce's ‘Ulysses’, with it being ‘effectively’ banned from publication in the
US, such that “throughout the 1920s, the United States Post Office Department
burned copies of the novel”.

~~~
IgorPartola
Makes one wonder how long it will take the US to stop being driven by this
sort of repressionist puritanical mindset.

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aasasd
Also: didn't expect the pic to actually be the entire 456-page book, embedded
from Archive.org.

