Dingo the Dissident

THE BLOG OF DISQUIET : Qweir Notions, an uncommonplace-book from the Armpit of Diogenes, binge-thinker jottings since 2008 .

Wednesday, 12 September 2012

"A maker of condoms purported to be from the town of Condom

in southwestern France has been ordered to pay 10,000 euros ($12,600) for false advertising
after the provenance of its prophylactics was found to be Malaysia..."

Condom d’Armagnac in the département of the Gers
is, notoriously, on the river Baise - which now also means ‘fuck’.  


But the verb ‘baiser’ still also keeps – albeit residually - 
its old sense of ‘kiss’.  Which tells us a lot
about some men’s attitude to, and confusion about,
the relationship between affection and sex.

‘Le baiser de la Fée’ (a ballet by Stravinsky)
means ‘The Fairy’s Kiss’.  
But ‘Je veux te baiser’ means ‘I want to fuck you’.

The usual current French word for ‘to kiss’ is ‘embrasser’ 
which originally mean ‘to hug’.  
This has pressed into service the rather awkward
‘serrer dans les bras’ (hold in one’s arms) 
or difficult-to-pronounce ‘étreindre’  for ‘to hug’.
Recently, the English noun (but not the verb) ‘hug’ has started to appear in French.

The baby-word 'bisous' is often used, but, more formally, ‘Je t’embrasse’ at the end of a French letter is equivalent to ‘xxx’ (or ‘kisses’).  
‘French letter’ is an obsolescent-to-obsolete  term in English 
 (along with ‘johnny’)  for condom’…

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1 comment:

Wofl said...

Germanic languages have no problem with 'hug', which is UMARME[N].