Shall we play at couch quail, my dear?

5 thoughts on “Shall we play at couch quail, my dear?”

1. I'm a little concerned at the blithe inclusion of "pogue the hone" in there, as that's clearly an Anglicization of the Gaelic "Póg mo thóin" (pronounced more or less identically) which means, basically, "kiss my ass". I'm not aware of it ever actually meaning "to have sex" which leads me to doubt the quality of this research overall…

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2. And, in another 200 years, "Bumping Uglies" will make the list.

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3. +Colm Buckley  Hmmm … here's an 1719 reference http://goo.gl/sRVZvf … interpreting it, "hone" is defined as ladyparts, mirrored back in the 19th C here http://goo.gl/2N39WK … so it's possible it's either a misinterpretation of the Gaelic, or a derivation thereof, but the use of the term in that way is way older than this particular article.

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4. +Mark Means And people will say, "Oooh, how cute!" Or, "Wow, that society was kind of pathological." One or the other. 🙂

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5. It's perfectly possible that it's an idiom – or at least a light euphemism – but "póg" definitely means "kiss" in modern Gaelic, and "thóin" is usually interpreted as "backside" although there's probably a bit of anatomical latitude. In modern Irish, "póg mo thóin" has both a literal and figurative meaning of "kiss my ass" … or, I guess, "blow me", so it's not too great a step from there. I don't know enough idiomatic Irish from a few centuries ago, though…

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