esteven: (Default)
esteven ([personal profile] esteven) wrote in [community profile] where_away2012-06-12 06:46 pm

Ram and Puss

'Brother, how tedious you can be, on occasion. I did hear some cries of "Jolly rogers - jolly rogers - we shall roger them." But in parenthesis, Jack, tell me about this word roger. I have often heard it aboard, but can make out no clear nautical signification.'
'Oh, it is no sea-term. They use it ashore much more than we do - a low cant expression meaning to swive or couple with.'
Stephen considered for a moment and then said, 'So roger joins bugger and that even coarser word; and they are all used in defiance and contempt, as though to an enemy; which seems to show a curious light on the lover's subjacent emotions. Conquest, rape, subjugation: have women a private language of the same nature, I wonder?"
Jack said, 'In some parts of the West Country rams are called Roger, as cats are called Puss; and of course that is their duty; though which came first, the deed or the doer, the goose or the egg, I am not learned enough to tell.'
'Would it not be the owl, at all?'
'Never in life, my poor Stephen. Who ever heard of a golden owl?


Why is it the duty of the rams to be called Roger, and of cats to be called Puss?
feroxargentea: (Default)

[personal profile] feroxargentea 2012-06-12 04:59 pm (UTC)(link)
All cats are called Puss, because... well *thinks* because they just ARE, that's why *g* Let's see what Wiktionary says: "From a Common Germanic word for cat. Akin to Dutch poes "puss, cat", Low German puus-katte, dialectal Swedish kattepus, Norwegian pus. Found also in several other European and Western Asian languages."

And it is the duty of a ram to swive or couple with his ewes - for why else would you keep a ram? - I suppose that is what Jack means anyway - he is not sure whether rams are called Roger because they roger, or whether the word comes from the name :-)
feroxargentea: (shagged out)

[personal profile] feroxargentea 2012-06-12 05:11 pm (UTC)(link)
Oh, he is making sense, entire sense, and as for the duties of a puss I am not even going there *g*
sid: (m&c Jack Aubrey smurf)

[personal profile] sid 2012-06-12 05:13 pm (UTC)(link)
rams are (commonly) called Roger, as cats are called Puss; and of course that is their duty

You can leave the cats out and the sentence is a bit easier to understand. It is the ram's duty to roger the ewes to make lots of little lambs!
heather_mist: (Default)

[personal profile] heather_mist 2012-06-12 05:30 pm (UTC)(link)
According to the Oxford dictionary 'roger' comes from an ancient word for penis. It didn't say what the ancient word was though...
sid: (m&c Stephen Smurf)

[personal profile] sid 2012-06-12 05:33 pm (UTC)(link)
Makes sense to me!
feroxargentea: (shagged out)

[personal profile] feroxargentea 2012-06-12 05:34 pm (UTC)(link)
"British vulgar slang"? Does nobody else get rogered, then? How sad!

One of my favourite local rock formations is called Ringing Roger... (random thought)
heather_mist: (Default)

[personal profile] heather_mist 2012-06-12 05:36 pm (UTC)(link)
as for the duties of a puss I am not even going there
A puss is not for duty, it is purely for pleasure... everyone knows that!
feroxargentea: (Default)

[personal profile] feroxargentea 2012-06-12 05:36 pm (UTC)(link)
The only thing that doesn't make sense it that "roger" normally means anally. Or maybe it's changed its meaning a bit in the last 200 years.
heather_mist: (Default)

[personal profile] heather_mist 2012-06-12 05:38 pm (UTC)(link)
A cat and a ram together cannot make lots of little pussy cats! It's biologically (and physically) impossible...

I wish you would not confuse my mind, for all love!
heather_mist: (Default)

[personal profile] heather_mist 2012-06-12 05:40 pm (UTC)(link)
"roger" normally means anally.
DOES it???
0.0
News to me... I thought it was much more generic than that!
feroxargentea: (Default)

[personal profile] feroxargentea 2012-06-12 05:41 pm (UTC)(link)
Just don't ask the Church of England!
feroxargentea: (Default)

[personal profile] feroxargentea 2012-06-12 05:43 pm (UTC)(link)
*snorts*

Maybe that's how rex cats got their curly hair.
heather_mist: (Default)

[personal profile] heather_mist 2012-06-12 05:43 pm (UTC)(link)
Or the Catholic church either.
heather_mist: (Default)

[personal profile] heather_mist 2012-06-12 05:45 pm (UTC)(link)
*winces*
feroxargentea: (Default)

[personal profile] feroxargentea 2012-06-12 05:47 pm (UTC)(link)
LOL

From where I'm standing, yeah, but clearly that's not universal. Oh that's the trouble with slang, no-one's pinning it down.
feroxargentea: (Default)

[personal profile] feroxargentea 2012-06-12 05:49 pm (UTC)(link)
Probably best not ask any church, they do get so very embarrassed and then tear themselves into schisms, the silly sods.

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