Latin obscenity


Latin obscenity is the profane, indecent, or impolite vocabulary of Latin, and its uses. Words deemed obscene were described as obscena, or improba. 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 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, 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, had used the word mentula 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: cūlus, mentula, cunnus, landīca, and cōleī. He also objects to words which mean "to fuck", as well as to the Latin word bīnī "two" because for bilingual speakers it sounds like the Greek βινεῖ , and also to two words for passing wind, vīssiō and pēdō. He does not object to using the word ānus, and says that pēnis, 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 :
Another way was to substitute the taboo word with a milder one or a metaphor, for example using clūnēs for cūlus or testiculī for cōleī.
Sometimes the offending word was replaced by a pronoun such as istuc or an adverb such as illīc, as in Martial :

and : the penis

Mentula 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 mentula and cunnus are given as ideal examples of obscene words:
Martial mocks a friend who despised effeminate clothing, explaining why he suspects that he is secretly homosexual:
Mentula also frequently appears in the poetry of Catullus. He uses Mentula as a nickname for Mamurra, as if it were an ordinary name, as in his epigram 105:

Etymology

The etymology of mentula is obscure, although outwardly it would appear to be a diminutive of mēns, gen. mentis, the "mind". Cicero's letter 9:22 ad Familiares relates it to menta, a spearmint stalk. Tucker's Etymological Dictionary of Latin relates it to ēminēre, "to project outwards", mentum, "chin", and mōns, "a mountain", all of which suggest an Indo-European root *men-. Other hypotheses have also been suggested, though none generally accepted.

Verpa is also a basic Latin obscenity for "penis", in particular for a penis in an erect state with the glans bare, as in the illustration of the god Mercury below. It was "not a neutral technical term, but an emotive and highly offensive word", used especially in contexts of aggressive homosexual acts rather than mere futūtiō. It is found frequently in graffiti of the type verpes quī istuc legēs.
It is found less frequently in Classical Latin literature, but it does appear in Catullus 28:
Catullus is here speaking metaphorically. He complains that when he accompanied Gaius Memmius, the governor of Bithynia, 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.
Verpus, as a masculine adjective or noun, referred to a man whose glans penis was exposed, either by an erection or by circumcision; thus Juvenal has
And in poem 47 Catullus writes:
In Martial's time it was a common practice for actors and athletes to be fitted with a Fibula to discourage sex and to preserve their voice or strength. Martial mocks one such actor as follows:

A third word for "penis" was mūtō, mūtōnis. This is very rare and found only in one line of Horace and a fragment of the satirist Lucilius. The passage in Horace 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:
And Lucilius says:
The word mūtō may be related to the marriage deity Mutunus Tutunus.
Although mūtō itself is rare, the derivative mūtūniātus is found twice in Martial, as at 3.73:
The derivative mūtōnium is found in Lucilius and in two Pompeian graffiti.

Synonyms and metaphors

The Latin word pēnis itself originally meant "tail". Cicero's ad Familiārēs, 9.22, observes that pēnis 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
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 :
from Pompeii.
The obscure word sōpiō 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:
and in a graffito from Pompeii:
The grammarian Sacerdos preserves a quotation about Pompey, that says quem non pudet et rubet, nōn est homō, sed sōpiō Sōpiō would appear to describe drawings such as that of the god Mercury in the illustration.
The word pipinna seems to have been children's slang for the penis; compare English pee-pee. It appears in Martial 11.71:
A draucus, according to Housman, was a man "who performs feats of strength in public". Rabun Taylor disagrees and sees a draucus more as a kind of rent boy who hung around in the baths in search of patrons. A gallus was an emasculated member of the cult of Cybele; according to Taylor, they had much in common with the hijras of India today.
Another euphemism for the penis was cauda, which occurs twice in Horace, and continues today in the French derivative queue. In one place in his Satires Horace writes:
For the metaphorical use of meiere, see below.
The words nervus and fascinum or fascinus, which meant a phallic image or amulet in the form of a penis, were also sometimes used as euphemisms for the penis. In one of Horace's Epodes a woman boasts of one of her lovers, Coan Amyntas,
And one of the characters in Petronius's Satyricon, Ascyltus, is described as follows:
Yet another euphemism is cōlēs or cōlis or caulis, which literally means the stem or stalk of a plant. This word was used by the satirist Lucilius and by the medical writer Celsus. In the same passage, Celsus refers to the foreskin as cutis "skin", and to the glans as glāns "acorn". Martial also uses the word glāns in an obscene pun :

Erect and flaccid

The verb arrigō, arrigere meant "to have an erection". Suetonius's Lives of the Twelve Caesars, Augustus 69, contains the sentence:
The participle arrēctus means 'erect'. Martial describes the habit of a certain girl of weighing a lover's penis in her hand :
Martial uses the word rigidam alone to refer to a penis in the following line, mocking a certain Greek philosopher who despite his beard was effeminate :
Another word for "erect" was tentus. Priapus is addressed as tente Priāpe in Priāpeia 81, and as being fascinō gravis tentō in Priāpeia 79.
An "erection" or "impatience to have sex" was tentīgō. Horace writes:
Similarly in Priapeia 33.5, the god Priapus says:
An adjective to describe a penis which refused to become erect was languida. Ovid :
And a girlfriend of Horace's chides him with the words :
While Catullus speaks of an impotent husband in these terms:

In the Romance languages

Mentula has evolved into Sicilian and Italian minchia and South Sardinian minca. Minga also exists in Spanish. Verpa is preserved in some Romance dialects, usually with another meaning; verpile 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 verga, obscene for penis, and in Romanian vargă, in Catalan and French verge, from Latin virga, "staff", and French queue, from Latin cauda/cōda "tail". The Portuguese :pt:Caralho|caralho "penis", first attested in the 10th century, is thought to derive from a vulgar Latin word *caraculum "a little stake". The Italian :it:cazzo|cazzo has no obvious Latin ancestor. A number of different suggestions have been made for its origin, but none has yet gained general acceptance.

: the testes

The basic word for the testicles in Latin was cōleī. It appears to have had an alternative form *cōleōnēs, from which the Spanish cojones and other Romance forms are derived..

Etymology

The etymology of cōleī is obscure. Tucker, without explanation, gives *qogh-sleǐ-os, and relates it to cohum, an obscure word for "yoke".
Lewis and Short's Latin Dictionary relates the word to culleus. However, this etymology is not generally accepted today, and according to the Thesaurus Linguae Latinae 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 says at one point honestī cōleī Lānuvīnī, Clīternīnī nōn honestī. However, the meaning of these phrases is not known, according to the Thesaurus Linguae Latinae.
The word occurs in Petronius :
Martial writes of a philosopher who had depilated his balls as well as the rest of his legs, using a pair of volsellae :
A Pompeian graffito quotes a line of iambic verse:
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 testēs. This word may have derived from the Latin for "witnesses". Cicero's letter says "testēs" verbum honestissimum in iūdiciō, aliō locō nōn nimis. Katz 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, or of a sacrificed animal ; a similar ritual took place in Umbria when dedicating a sacrificial animal. According to Katz, the word testis itself appears to be derived from the root trityo- and originally meant a third party.
The two meanings of testēs open the door for puns such as the following from Martial :
Or Cicero's testīs ēgregiōs! in his amusing account of two witnesses hiding naked in a public bathhouse.
The diminutive testiculī was entirely confined to the anatomical sense; it is used 33 times by the medical writer Celsus, but testis not at all. The satirists Persius and Juvenal also used the word testiculī. Veterinary writers use both testis and testiculus.
In Catullus, the testicles are famously referred to as pondera, 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:
Ovid recounting the same story, and perhaps implying that Attis removed the whole organ, similarly uses the phrase onus inguinis.
Other euphemisms are used in other writers. Ovid uses the phrase membra genitālia:

In the Romance languages

Cōleōnēs is productive in most of the Romance languages: cf. Italian coglioni, French couilles, couillons; Portuguese colhões, Galician collóns, collois, collós, Catalan collons, Sardinian cozzones, Romanian coi, coaie, Spanish Spanish profanity#Cojones.

''Cunnus'': the vulva

Cunnus was the basic Latin word for the vulva. The Priapeia mention it in connection with mentula, above. Despite its similarity to "cunt", the Oxford English Dictionary cautions that the two words may have developed from different roots.

Etymology

Cunnus has a distinguished Indo-European lineage. It is cognate with Persian kun "anus" and kos "vulva", and with Greek κύσθος. Tucker and de Vaan derive it from an Indo-European *kut-nos akin to Welsh cwd 'bag, scrotum'.

Usage

Cicero's Orator §154 confirms its obscene status. Cicero writes:
Because the /m/ of cum assimilates to the /n/ of nōbīs, cum nōbīs sounds very similar to cunnō bis, meaning "in/from/with a cunt twice". A similar euphemism occurs in French: the avoidance of qu'on, homophone to con, by the insertion of a superfluous letter: que l'on.
Horace, however, uses the word cunnus in his Satires at 1.2.70, and again at 1.3.105:
Martial also uses it freely, for example :
The word cunnilingus 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".

Synonyms and metaphors

These include sinus, "indentation", and fossa, "ditch".
The modern scientific or polite words vulva and vagina both stem from Latin, but originally they had different meanings. The word vāgīna is the Latin word for scabbard or sword-sheath.
Vulva in classical Latin generally signified the womb, especially in medical writing, and also it is also common in the Vetus Latina version of the Bible. The meanings of vagina and vulva have changed by means of metaphor and metonymy, respectively. Other words for the womb are uterus, mātrīx, venter, and alvus. At Juvenal 6.129, however, the word volva is used of the vagina or clitoris of the nymphomaniac empress Messalina, who is described as departing from a session in a brothel:

In the Romance languages

Cunnus is preserved in almost every Romance language: e.g. French con, Catalan cony, Spanish coño, Galician cona, Portuguese cona, Sardinian cunnu, Old Italian cunna. In Calabrian dialects the forms cunnu and cunna are used as synonyms of "stupid, dumb". In Portuguese it has been transferred to the feminine gender; the form cunna is also attested in Pompeian graffiti and in some late Latin texts.

''Landīca'': the clitoris

The ancient Romans had medical knowledge of the clitoris, and their native word for it was landīca. 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 misella landica, 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 landīca by quoting an unintentionally obscene utterance made in the Senate:
with illam dīcam echoing the forbidden word. Note that the "m" at the end of "illam" was pronounced like "n" before the following "d."
The word landīca is found in Roman graffiti: appears on a leaden projectile found at Perugia left over from the Perusine War, while a derivative word is found in Pompeii: .
It also occurs in Priapeia 78.5, where a girl who has received the attentions of a cunnilingus is described as suffering from landīcae... fossīs. 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 suggests one possible etymology as landīca.

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

In the Romance languages

Landīca survived in Old French landie, and in Romanian .

''Cūlus'': the anus

The basic Latin word for the anus was cūlus. 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 cūlus appears to be used only of humans. It was associated with both defecation and with sex. Catullus mocks a certain Furius with these words:
Martial mocks a passive homosexual in these terms:

''Pōdex''

The word pōdex was synonymous with cūlus, "arsehole". This word is thought to be an o-stem version of the same root as pēdere "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 writes:
Juvenal, writing of outwardly virile but in practice effeminate philosophers, writes:
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.
Pōdex seems to have been rather a rarer word than cūlus. 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 shows that it was less offensive than cūlus. In later medical Latin, such as the 5th century Cassius Felix, it could be used as an alternative for ānus.

Other synonyms

A more seemly Latin word for the backside was clūnēs "buttocks"; this word was generally more decent than cūlus, 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 speaks scathingly of philosophers who have double standards, preaching about virtue but practising vice:
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 the god Priapus threatens potential thieves with punishment as follows:
Ānus was the name for the posterior opening of the digestive tract; the word is not specific to that usage, but instead originally meant "ring". Its anatomical sense drove out its other meanings, and for this reason the diminutive ānulus became the usual Latin name for a ring or circle. In his book on agriculture, Columella describes how to treat a cow with stomach-ache:
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. "Ring" is also British slang for "anus".

In the Romance languages

Cūlus has been preserved as meaning the buttocks 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 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

Futuō, infinitive futuere, perfect futuī, supine futūtum, Latin for "to fuck", is richly attested and useful.
The etymology of futuō is "obscure". It may be related to refūtō "repel, rebut" and cōnfūtō, "suppress" or "beat down", and come from a root meaning "beat".
Futuō is richly attested in all its forms in Latin literature. In one poem Martial writes, using the supine:
Not only the word itself, but also derived words such as dēfutūta, "fucked out, exhausted from sex", diffutūta, and cōnfutuere "to have sex with" are attested in Classical Latin literature. The derived noun futūtiō, "act of intercourse", also exists in Classical Latin, and the nomen agentis futūtor, which corresponds to the English epithet "fucker", but lacking the derogatory tone of the English word. The god Priapus says in one poem :
It is also used metaphorically in Catullus 6, which speaks of latera ecfutūta, funds exhausted, literally "fucked away".
Futuō, 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 fututa sum hic and prostitutes, canny at marketing, appear to have written other graffiti complimenting their customers for their sexual prowess:
It is famously used in Catullus 32:
Futuō 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 tribadism, a lesbian.
Other more neutral synonyms for futuō in Latin include ineō, inīre, literally "to enter", as in this sentence from Suetonius, supposedly from a letter written by Mark Antony to his brother-in-law Octavian :
The word coeō, coīre, literally "to go with," whence Latin and English coitus, is also used euphemistically for sexual intercourse, but it is not exactly a synonym for futuere. It can be used for both men and women, and also of animals and birds.
Another word found on Pompeian inscriptions was calāre, which appears to be a borrowing from the Greek χαλάω "loosen". A Pompeian inscription says Dionysius quā horā vult licet chalāre. The Latin word laxāre appears to be used in the same sense in Priapeia 31: haec meī tē ventris arma laxābunt.
Adams lists a large number of other euphemisms for the sexual act, such as this one from Juvenal :

In the Romance languages

Futuō, 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, Italian fottere. A famous ribald song in Old Occitan sometimes attributed to the troubadour William IX of Aquitaine reads:

''Pēdīcāre'': 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 irrumāre "to force fellatio" respectively, which were used with mock hostility in Catullus 16:
The passive voice, pēdīcārī, 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:
There is some doubt in the dictionaries whether the correct spelling was ped- or paed-. Bücheler argues that ped- is correct on the basis of the following epigram in the Priapeia :

''Pēdīcātor'' and ''pēdīco'' (noun)

The word pēdīcātor is used in a poem by Catullus's friend the orator Licinius Calvus quoted by Suetonius, in which the King of Bithynia is referred to as pēdīcātor Caesaris, 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 pēdīcō or pēdīco, of the same meaning, for example at 11.87:
The activities of a pēdīco are hinted at in the following lines of Martial :
The various distinctions in sexual activity are made clear in the following poem of Martial :
The fourth line rules out Sextillus as an irrumātor; the two remaining possibilities were in Roman eyes the most degrading, that he was either a cunnilingus or a fellātor.

Etymology

Pēdīcāre is often thought to be a Greek loanword in Latin, but the long "i" is an obstacle. Bücheler, who rejects this etymology, suggests there may be a connection to pōdex and pēdō.

In Romance

Unlike futuō, the word pēdīcō has no reflexes in Romance. The French slang word :fr:pédé|pédé is an abbreviated form of pédéraste, according to the :fr:Dictionnaire historique de la langue française|Dictionnaire historique de la langue française.

''Irrumāre'' and ''fellāre'': oral sex

''Irrumāre'': to make suck

Irrumāre, which in English is denoted by the passive construction "to be sucked", is an active verb in Latin, since the irrumātor was considered to be the active partner, the fellātor the passive. Irrumātio is the counterpart of fellātio; 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 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:
According to Adams, it was a standard joke to speak of irrumātio as a means of silencing someone. Martial writes:
Irrumātio was seen as a hostile act that enemies might inflict on one. An inscription says:
It is also a standard threat made by the god Priapus, protector of orchards, to potential adult male thieves, as in Priapeia 13:

''Fellāre'': to suck

The word fellāre 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 fellātor and the feminine fellātrīx 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 butch lesbian, writes :
Fellō was generally used absolutely, without an object. A Pompeian wall inscription says Murtis bene felas, and another says Romula cum suo hic fellat et uubique.
Fellō leaves little trace in Romance languages, being replaced by sūgere and its derivatives.

''Lingere'' and ''lambere'': to lick

The verb lingō was common in both sexual and non-sexual contexts. As a sexual term, it could have cūlum, mentulam, or cunnum as its object.
Its synonym lambere was also sometimes used in a sexual sense. Martial criticises a eunuch who presumed to have oral sex with women:

''Glūbere'': to "peel"

Glūbere "to take the bark off", "peel" and dēglūbere "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, after mentioning various perversions, says:
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, who says in a moment of bitterness:
Some, noting that in Italian the phrases cavar la pelle, scorticare can mean "strip someone of their money", and similar uses of tondēre and dēglūbere 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.

''Cēvēre'' and ''crīsāre'': to waggle

Cēveō and crīsō are basic Latin obscenities that have no exact English equivalents. Crīsō referred to the actions of the female partner in sexual intercourse ; as, similarly to the case in English, futuō, which is often translated "fuck", primarily referred to the male action. Cēveō 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, cēveō seems not to be of Greek origin. Francis A. Wood relates it to an Indo-European root *kweu- or *qeu-, relating to a variety of back and forth motions.

Usage

Cēveō always refers to a male taking the bottom role in anal sex. Martial 3.95 contains the phrase:
Crīsō appears to have had a similar meaning, but to have been used of the female. Again Martial 10.68:
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.

''Masturbārī'': to masturbate

This word is found twice in the poet Martial, but apparently not in earlier writers. Martial writes in one poem :
The word masturbātor also occurs. In 14.203 Martial writes of a Spanish girl from Gādēs :
Hippolytus was famous in mythology for refusing the advances of his stepmother Phaedra.

Etymology

Lewis and Short suggest that the word masturbārī may be derived from manū stuprārī "to defile oneself with a hand", and this is the usual view, and supported by J.N. Adams. Another view, however, is that it comes from *mās + turbāre, assuming an otherwise unattested meaning of "penis" for mās. The supporters of this view cite another word mascarpiōnem, which occurs once in Latin literature in Petronius, and which appears from the context to mean "beating the penis with a wand ". It is argued that in this word, the element mās- may be the same as in masturbārī. 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 criticises a Roman gentleman for masturbating, using the phrase:
The hand used for masturbating by the Romans was evidently the left one, as Martial 11.73 confirms.
In another poem Martial advises a friend:
He continues:
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, however, Martial admits that he himself for want of a sexual partner sometimes resorts to the practice:
In another, addressed to a man who finds it difficult in middle age to get an erection, Martial uses the word trūdō to signify masturbation:
The frequentative form of trūdō is trūsāre. This occurs in only one place, in Catullus 56:
The meaning of trūsantem here is disputed. "Masturbating" was the interpretation of A. E. Housman; he also wanted to read prō tēlō as prōtēlō 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, prōtēlō probably means "in a threesome", since a prōtēlum, according to the agricultural writer Cato the Elder, was a team of three oxen pulling a plough. Uden translates: "I just caught a kid banging his girlfriend", explaining that pūpulum is a derogatory diminutive.
The verb caedere 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 solēbam fūrēs caedere quamlibet valentēs. Dione, was the mother of Aphrodite, goddess of love; according to a passage in Homer's Iliad book 5, she cared for Aphrodite when the latter was pierced by Diomedes' weapon in a battle. The implication is that her services might be needed here after Catullus had dealt with the boy.

''Cacāre'': to defecate

Cacō, cacāre 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 κοπρος, kopros, meaning "excrement". It also exists in Germanic; in German, Swedish, Scots, whilst English "poppiecock" derives from Dutch pappe kak, "diarrhea". It exists in Turkish, Irish and Scottish Gaelic, Hebrew, Hungarian, Ukrainian, Russian, Lithuanian and Persian/Isfahani accent. In British English, "caca" is occasionally used as childish slang for excrement, 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. The derivatives of this Latin word appear in Spanish, Catalan, Portuguese, Italian, Romanian, and French.
Also, in Slavic languages: kakati.

Usage

The verb is usually used intransitively. Martial says:
However, in the phrase below, from Catullus 36, it is transitive:

Synonyms and metaphors

Few synonyms are attested in Classical Latin, apart from a word cunīre, attested by the grammarian Festus in the meaning stercus facere. The word dēfēcāre comes much later.
A euphemism which occurs in Petronius is suā rē causā facere:
The same euphemism is used in Petronius of relieving oneself of gas.

In the Romance languages

Cacāre is preserved unaltered in Sardinian and the southern Italian dialects, and with little alteration in Italian. It becomes Galician, Catalan, Spanish, and Portuguese cagar, in Vegliot Dalmatian kakuor, in French chier, and in Romanian as căcare or a căca. German kacken, Dutch kakken, Czech kakat, Lithuanian kakoti, Russian какать, Icelandic kúka, Bosnian kakiti etc. are all slang words meaning "to defecate", most of them having roughly the same level of severity as the English expression "take a dump".

''Merda'': feces

Merda is the basic Latin word for excrement. Frequently used, it appears in most of the Romance languages.

Etymology

Merda represents Indo-European *s-merd-, whose root sense was likely "something malodorous." It is cognate with German Mist, Lithuanian "smirdė́ti", Russian "смерде́ть" and Polish śmierdzieć.

Usage

The word merda is attested in classical texts mostly in veterinary and agricultural contexts, meaning "manure". Cato the Elder uses it, as well as stercus, while the Mulomedicina Chironis speaks of merda būbula, "cattle manure".
Unlike the English word "shit", merda could be both singular and plural. In Horace, a talking statue of Priapus says:
In one of his verse fables, Phaedrus speaks of some dogs who, on hearing thunder,
The word can also be used in a metaphorical sense, as at Martial 3.17, speaking of a tart which had been blown on by a man with impure breath to cool it down:

Synonyms and metaphors

The politer terms for merda in Classical Latin were stercus, "manure" and fimum or fimus, "filth." Stercus was used frequently in the Vulgate, as in its well-known translation of Psalm 112:7:
In Classical Latin, faex, plural faecēs, meant the dregs, such as are found in a bottle of wine; the word did not acquire the sense of feces until later.

In the Romance languages

Merda is productive in the Romance languages, and is the obvious etymon of French merde, Spanish mierda, and in Vegliot Dalmatian miarda. It is preserved unaltered in Catalan, Galician, Italian, Portuguese, and Sardinian. It was preserved in Romanian too, not for feces, where căcat is used instead, but in the word dezmierda, originally meaning "to clean the bottom of "; subsequently becoming "to cuddle" or "to fondle".

''Pēdere'' and ''vissīre'': passing wind

''Pēdere''

Pēdō, pēdere, pepēdī, pēditum is the basic Latin word for passing intestinal wind. In the Sermones 1.8, 46, Horace writes:
Christopher Smart translates this passage as "from my cleft bum of fig-tree I let out a fart, which made as great an explosion as a burst bladder". The "I" of this satire is the god Priapus, and Smart explains that he was made of fig-tree wood which split through being poorly prepared.
Martial also uses the word several times, including the following :
A word oppēdere is used in Horace.
Catullus also uses the noun pēditum in one of his poems.

''Vissīre''

A rarer word, meaning "to fart silently", was vissīre. This is hinted at in Cicero's letter ad Fam. 9.22, where he says that the word divīsiō is potentially obscene, in the same way as the word intercapēdō. The word is not recorded in Lewis and Short's Latin Dictionary and does not appear to have been used by any extant author. However, the Oxford Latin Dictionary quotes an inscription from a public bath in Ostia which says
Judging from derivatives in some of the daughter languages, there was also a noun *vissīna "a silent fart", but no trace of this is found in the extant texts.

''Crepāre''

The noise made by escaping flatulence was usually called crepitus, a word which could refer to "a noise" of various kinds, and the verb crepāre was used of breaking wind noisily. Martial writes of a certain man, who after an embarrassing incident of flatulence when praying in the temple of Jupiter, was careful in the future to take precautions:

Euphemisms

In Petronius, in the speech of the vulgar millionaire Trimalchio, euphemisms suā rē causā facere and facere quod sē iuvet "do what helps one" are both used for relieving oneself of wind:

Etymology

The antiquity of pēdō and its membership in the core inherited vocabulary is clear from its reduplicating perfect stem. It is cognate with Greek πέρδομαι, English fart, Bulgarian prdi, Polish pierdzieć, Russian пердеть, Lithuanian persti, Sanskrit pardate, and Avestan pərəδaiti, all of which mean the same thing.
Vissīre is clearly onomatopoeic. The Old Norse fisa may be compared, although the correspondence in sounds is not exact.

In the Romance languages and English

Pēdere and pēditum survive in Romance. In French, the noun ' from pēditum and the derived verb ' are very much alive. In Catalan, the verb is petar-se and the noun is pet. In Spanish the noun pedo as well as the verbs and pedorrear are similarly derived. Portuguese peido and peidar, and Galician peido and peidar are related. Italian peto is less common than scorreggia and its derived verb scorreggiare, but in Neapolitan pireto is frequently used.
The English word petard, found mostly in the cliché "hoist with his own petard", comes from an early explosive device, the noise of which was likened to that of farting. English also has petomania for a musical performance of breaking intestinal wind, and petomane for the performer, after Le Pétomane, a French performer active in the early 20th century.
Vissīre, though rare in Latin texts, has derivates in several Romance languages, such as Romanian beșí and beșínă ; French vesse and vesser.

''Mingere'' and ''meiere'': urination

Mingō and meiō are two variant forms of what is likely a single Latin verb meaning "to urinate", or in more vulgar usage, "to take a piss." The two verbs share a perfect mixī or mīnxī, and a past participle mictum or minctum. It is likely that mingō represents a variant conjugation of meiō with a nasal infix.
In Classical Latin, the form mingō was more common than meiō. In some Late Latin texts a variant first conjugation form meiāre is attested. This is the form that is productive in Romance.
The Classical Latin word micturīre became the accepted medical word meaning "to urinate". It is the source of the English medical term "micturition reflex".

Usage

Martial's epigram 3.78 uses meiere and ūrīna to make a bilingual pun:
The verbs meiere and mingere could also be used euphemistically of sexual intercourse. Horace, speaking of the punishments meted out to adulterers, says:
Catullus speaks of a father who "pissed in the lap of his own son", that is, had sex with his son's wife.

Urine

The most usual word for urine was ūrīna, which is attested in Latin as early as Cicero, and became the usual polite term. The relationship with the Greek verb οὐρέω, "to urinate", is not clear. In Classical Latin, however, the verb ūrīnārī meant "to dive into water", and ūrīnātor was "a diver", ūrīnantēs "those who dive".
Catullus writes contemptuously of a certain Spaniard who was one of the lovers of his girlfriend Lesbia:
Another word for urine, but less commonly used, was lōtium. This word relates to lavāre, "to wash". The Romans, innocent of soap, collected urine as a source of ammonia to use in laundering clothes. The early agricultural writer Cato, an advocate of cabbage, used this word when he wrote :

Etymology

Meiere is an inherited Indo-European word. It relates to Sanskrit mehati, "urinates", Persian mīz, "urine", Lithuanian myža, "he/she urinates", Greek ὀμείχειν, "to urinate", which, taken together, point to an Indo-European *h3meiģh-. This IE root with a palatal ģh was formerly mixed up with another one with velar *gh meaning "mist", hence erroneous tentative overall translations like "to sprinkle" or "to wet" which still turn up sometimes.

In the Romance languages

Though mingere and meiere are the Classical Latin forms, meiāre seems to have been the popular form in Late Latin. This underlies Galician mexar, Portuguese mijar, and Spanish mear. *Pissiāre represents a borrowing from the Germanic languages, and appears elsewhere in the Romance territory, as in French pisser, Catalan pixar, Italian pisciare and Romanian a pișa, along with English to piss.

Latin words relating to prostitution

Compared to the anatomical frankness of the Roman vocabulary about sexual acts and body parts, the Roman vocabulary relating to prostitution seems euphemistic and metaphorical.
Prostitutes were called meretrīx, "earner", and lupa, "she-wolf"; a brothel was a lupānar; these words referred to the mercantile and perceived predatory activities of prostitutes. The Latin verb prōstō meant "to be up for sale" and prōstituō meant "to expose for public sale."
The poet Juvenal describes how the disgraced Empress Messalina used to enjoy playing the part of a prostitute in a brothel:
The pimp or pander in charge of the brothel, who dismissed the girls at closing time, was called lēnō if male and lēna if female.
The neuter word scortum could refer to either a male or female prostitute. This word may relate to Latin scorteus, "made of leather or hide", much as English refers to the skin trade. Lewis and Short quote Varro: pellem antīquī dīcēbant scortum.
Another word for a male prostitute, notably one who is no longer a boy, is exolētus. Cicero writes:
The verb scortor, scortārī, which occurs chiefly in Plautus, means "to go whoring" or "to employ prostitutes". Plautus illustrates its use in Asinaria:
The important and productive words for a prostitute in Romance, *pūta or *pūtāna, are not attested in Classical Latin, despite their many Romance derivatives: French putain and pute, Italian puttana, Spanish, Filipino, Catalan, Portuguese and Galician puta. French linguists state that they relate to Latin pūteō, pūtēre, "to stink," and thus represent yet another metaphor.. Spaniards María Moliner and Joan Coromines think they came from Vulgar Latin *putta, feminine form of *puttus, an emphatic form of pūtus, "pure" or "boy". In Portugal, the word puto has the same connotation as "small kid" or "little boy"; in Brazil, on the other hand, it is slang for "pissed off" or enraged males in general or as a colloquial, mildly offensive term for male escorts – the male counterpart of the slang puta, with the same meanings.

In popular culture

The HBO/BBC2 original television series Rome depicts the city with the grit and grime that is often absent from earlier productions, including that of language. But since the actors speak English, Latin profanity is mostly seen in written graffiti, such as: