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We open our mouths, force air from our lungs into our larynx, our voice box, and through an opening between our vocal cords, which vibrate. And then we speak. If the cords vibrate quickly, we hear that voice as higher pitched, a tenor or soprano; if slowly, we hear an alto or bass. It seems so simple, but it’s made it possible for empires to rise and fall; for children to reach small workable armistices with their parents; for corporations to control a nation as if it were a great big wind-up bathtub toy; for lovers to run the emotional rapids of courtship; for societies to express their loftiest dreams or lowest prejudices. Many of these qualities we find branded into the words themselves. Language records the fashions and feelings of a people. When William the Conquerer invaded England in 1066, he imposed French customs, laws, and language, many of which we still use. The class-conscious French elite thought the subjugated Saxons uncouth and crude, and the Saxon language even at its most polite coarse and rude, first because it wasn’t French, second because it was blunt. Hence, the French-derived word “perspiration” was considered polite, whereas the Saxon “sweat” was not; the French “urine” and “excrement” were polite, while the Saxon “piss” and “shit” were not. The Saxon word for lovemaking was “fuck” (from Old English
fokken, “to beat against”) -- another Saxon word for having sex was
swyve, which the British still sometimes use -- but the French used the word “fornicate” (from the Latin
fornix, a vaulted or arched basement room in Rome which prostitutes rented; it became a euphemism for brothel, and then a verb that meant to frequent a brothel, and finally the act performed in a brothel.
Fornix is related to fornax, a “vaulted brick oven, which derives ultimately from the Latin
formus, which meant simply warm). So “to fornicate” is to pay a visit to a small, warm subterranean room with arched ceilings. This obviously appealed more to French sensibility than the idea of “to beat against” someone, which must have seemed too animal and crude, the epitome of things Saxon.
-- Diane Ackerman, A Natural History of the Senses
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