Full citation:Turton, Stephen. 2024. Before the Word Was Queer: Sexuality and the English Dictionary 1600-1930. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. ISBN 978-1-316-51873-1
A study of the handling of transgressive sexuality in English dictionaries over the centuries.
The book begins with an anecdote about the OED updating its entry for “marriage” when the (British) marriage equality act was passed, and how this was framed in the press as participating in a “change of definition”. This is followed by an anecdote from a slander case in 1942, which argued that “lesbian” could not be slanderous, as it was (incorrectly) asserted that the word didn’t exist in English when the relevant law was passed--an argument based on citations in the OED entry for “lesbian”, which was not included in the first edition published in 1908.
Does the OED reflect or prescribe usage? Or something else? Despite the lack of the sexual sense of “lesbian” in the first edition of the OED, the word was definitely in use in that sense. The relationship between language and its dictionaries is complex and falls somewhere in the middle ground between documentation and prescription. Dictionaries are not neutral entities, especially in contested fields, such as sexuality. This book will explore that relationship and its history in English.
The author uses the example of “queer” in a sexual sense to trace how words entered the dictionary and from what sources. The earliest current citations are one from 1894 in a letter by the Marquess of Queensbury, then after a gap of 20 years, two newspaper examples in California. But the 1894 example is ambiguous in meaning and only clearly intended as negative, while the 1914 examples are clearly in the context of homosexuality. The origin of new senses can be hard to pin down due to polysemous senses, and shifts in application.
There is a discussion of what falls under the author’s use of “dictionary” as opposed to other types of reference works, then a similar discussion of the scope of sexuality as discussed in this work. This is followed by a review of previous literature and a history of dictionaries as a publishing genre.
A review of queer historiography challenges the supposed clear dividing line at the “invention of homosexuality” in the late 19th century. Definitions in dictionaries, in addition to negotiating the balance between descriptive and prescriptive, also reflect societal judgments and norms (and tend to be inherently socially conservative). Thus, when the 1914 OED defines “tribade” as “a woman who practices unnatural vice with other women” it is not providing a value-neutral reflection of the word (or even an objective description of usage), but is telling the reader how to think about the subject. It is also obfuscating the specifics of meaning, contributing to silencing the topic. It is likely that many readers of the definition would have been unclear on the specifics of the denotation, while understanding the judgment. “Lexicographers favored disapproval over detail.”
An absence in the dictionary can reflect nonexistent words, or ignorance of their records, or a deliberate withholding of knowledge.
The remainder of this introductory chapter lays out the plan of the book’s methodology and structure. The first four chapters look at specific “cultural discourses” in an overlapping chronology.
1. Conceptual frameworks, in which sexuality was discussed and interpreted, focusing on the words “buggery” and “sodomy.”
2. Sexuality as driver of national imagery.
3. Dictionary as gatekeeper, by defining or excluding words and meanings.
4. The treatment of transgressive sexuality by medical texts, especially for female, same-sex topics.
This takes the chronology up to 1884 when the fascicles of the OED began to be published.
5. Looks at the OED specifically, including the 1933 supplement.
This is followed by a discussion of current lexicographic concerns and approaches.
This chapter looks at how words are defined and cited, and the semantic frameworks they’re associated with, using “sodomy” and “buggery” as the working examples. [Note: my summary is going to give undue attention to discussions relevant to women.]
17 century definitions of “buggery” in legal dictionaries include both homosexual acts and bestiality. They often reference earlier penalties (burning), though that was no longer in force. Two factors contribute to obscuring the specific nature of the acts so named. The descriptions are often in Latin (despite the books being overtly intended for non-scholarly readers), and the sexual nature of the acts is usually not explicitly mentioned. That you get entries like:
“One describeth this offence to be carnalis copula contra naturam & haec vel per confusionem specierum, sc. A man or a woman with a brute beast, vel sexuum, sc. A man with a man, a woman with a woman.” (1652) The question of whether sodomy could be committed between women was actually a point of contention.
These legal texts might have more explicit descriptions of the act elsewhere (e.g., that it requires “penetration and the emission of seed”) while being vague in the glossary. This deliberate vagueness has been a general feature of discourse around homosexuality, with authors often referring to it as an act “not to be named” or “not suitable to be discussed.”
When examined in parallel with other sexual terms, such as “copulation” or “fucking”, there is a general pattern of focusing on men as those who “commit sex”, but also a silent assumption that sex occurs between a male-female couple. So “sodomy” is presented as something a man does to a man where the nature of the act is separately defined as something a man does to a woman. These patterns complicate the interpretation of buggery/sodomy, both in terms of the nature of the act and the scope of its participants. We’ll get back to that.
A 1596 glossary typifies this vagueness, defining buggery, as “conjunction with one of the same kind” or in a later revision adding “or of men with beasts”. This is a relatively judgment-free definition, especially in comparison with the later editions’ definition of “sodomy” as “when one man lieth filthily with another man.”
The cultural association of “sodomy” with biblical references, and "buggery" with the 1533 Buggery Act raises the question of whether word choice depended on the genre of the text. An analysis of the association of these words (in their dictionary entries) with terms associated with religion (e.g., “sin”), or law (e.g., “crime”) also considering association with nature (e.g., “unnatural”) finds a definite association of “sodomy” with religious contexts, but a unclear preference in context for “buggery.”
In general, judgmental language when defining sexual terms works to clearly distinguish approved acts (m/f procreative sex within marriage) from unapproved acts (everything else). At the same time, by identifying and listing unapproved acts, a dictionary recognizes their existence and possibility. Except when specifically addressing acts defined as same-sex, definitions of sexual offenses (such as fornication, incest, polygamy, prostitution), explicitly presented the act as m/f.
The buggery act of 1535 defined buggery as “a detestable and abominable voice…committed with mankind or beast.” The lack of specifics regarding the agent of this act, and the use of “mankind” (rather than, for example, “man”) left room for dispute over whether women were in scope. If “mankind” can refer to human beings of any gender or if the specified agent can be of any gender, then m/f sex is technically included in “buggery”. This is workable if the “vice” in question is something that can be done to a woman, as in a disputed 18th century case where the term was applied to anal rape of a woman. But that requires an additional layer of definition of the act that is often absent or taken for granted.
One position held that “mankind” should be understood as “humanity” not “male persons”. The question of whether the omitted agent could be female was addressed directly in the context of bestiality (“by womankind with brute beast”) and addressed in some expanded definitions of sodomy as “a carnal copulation against nature, two wit, of man or woman in the same sex, or of either of them with beasts.” Others argued a distinction that sodomy excluded bestiality, while buggery included it. By the mid 17th century, legal definitions of buggery settled on including bestiality (by a man or woman) and both m/m and f/f sex. But exceptions occur that do not include f/f ( by omission rather than explicitly). The inclusion of f/f sex is largely restricted to legal dictionaries, rather than general purpose ones. The most limited definition of buggery mentions only m/m sex and omits bestiality. [Note: Despite these published definitions, England was absent of actual prosecutions of f/f “buggery”.]
As a rule, definitions of “sodomy” are more restricted. Bestiality is not included, and when the gender of the participants is mentioned, only men are specified. This is attributed to the model of the biblical story where male-assigned participants are involved. [Note: one might dispute the gender of angels, but they were treated as male by the human participants.]
In some cases, sodomy and buggery were presented as synonyms, but more often, sodomy was considered a subset of buggery.
The chapter moves on to considering the specific nature of the acts involved. While some learned sources make reference (in Latin) to anal penetration, none of the surveyed dictionaries explained the physical act. Instead, vague reference is made to the “unnatural” aspect combined with lust, wantonness, conjunction, copulation. But when those terms are defined, it is always specifically in reference to m/f sex. “The active generation between male and female” etc. Such terms are either too underspecified for clarity (“to join together”) or too over-specified to include same-sex acts.
We return now to the observation that dictionary definitions of sexual terms assume a male agent. Definitions of sex acts typically involve an unspecified agent (understood as a man) doing something to a woman. These formal definitions, however, do not reflect the more expansive use of the words in everyday language, where it is seen that women can fuck and men can be fucked. These uses turn up in legal records of witness testimony, but are not reflected when formal legal dictionaries are drawn up. (This points up only one of the flaws in using dictionaries as a guide to real-world language.)
In the context of this androcentricity there is a brief discussion of Anne Lister’s annotations on a 1735 Latin-English dictionary that placed herself as agent in a sexual context. Some dictionaries were specifically aimed at a female audience. The book speculates whether a woman reading a definition of a sexual verb as “to carnally know a woman” might have been inspired to place herself in the role of agent – as we know Anne Lister did, given that she describes becoming aroused at such a text.
From the mid 18th century on, dictionary compilers dealt with their anxiety around this possibility by increasingly censoring and obscuring sexual language in order to avoid giving people (especially women) ideas. This self-censorship not only appears in legal commentaries and glossaries, but in court records themselves, where accused acts of sodomy/buggery are concealed under phrases like “an unnatural crime” or using severely abbreviated forms of the word such as initials or first and last letter, joined by a dash.
Such words were also disappearing from ordinary dictionaries, such as Samuel Johnson’s (1755). Before that date, more than half of the studied dictionaries included “buggery,” while after, only 15.6% do. Entries for “sodomy” also declined somewhat, though appearing in well over half the texts both before and after. (This will be explored further in chapter 3.) Those entries that did appear from around 1750 to 1850 remove any explicit sexual reference and simply use phrases like “an unnatural crime.”
This chapter begins exploring the assertion that languages bear an essential relationship to the nature of their speakers, and that deviations of the language from this essential quality can be attributed to foreign influences. This idea appears in the introduction to a 1676 dictionary. The naturalization of words is paralleled to the naturalization of citizens and must be a strongly policed. Ethnic stereotypes are ascribed to languages along with the people who speak them. English, of course, is assumed to be neutral, moderate, and free from excess.
This establishes the principle that dictionaries have a moral mission to exclude words that represent concepts that should be excluded from English culture. Or at least such uninvited word usage should be presented with appropriate judgment noted. (Chapter 3 will specifically explore how the strategy was applied to language for f/f relations.)
This chapter looks at how dictionaries excluded or marginalized language for transgressive sexuality either specifically situating them as foreign (via etymology) or as displaced in time and space (via citation choice). The high status of classical literature posed a problem that might be handled more subtly.
Entries for “sodomy” invoke both strategies, emphasizing the foreign origin of the word, and its reference to biblical eras (taking the later equation of Sodom with m/m sex as a given). Similarly, etymologies of “bugger” that traced it to Bulgaria, even if simply via analogy of the punishment by burning , applied both to heretics (via a specific heresy attributed to Bulgaria) and sodomites.
It was common for dictionaries to ascribe the origins of both the word and the practice to specific foreign origins. A 1670 law dictionary assigns those origins to Italy, and specifically to Lombardy. [Note: Although the book doesn’t mention this, there may be additional relevant stereotypes associated with Lombardy, long associated with Italian banking practices. But it may be simply that Lombardy was the most familiar region of Italy when viewed from distant England.] Not only were claims made that foreigners brought the word/practice to England, but that visiting foreign climes could result in Englishman picking up both.
Terms related to “pederasty” underwent similar treatment, with the added complication of the esteem in which classical civilizations were held. Definitions of pederasty conflated it with sodomy (specifically with “boys” as a target) but the inherent contradictions in this equivalence resulted in ambiguity, due to the positive connotations of pederasty in classical texts. Further, pederasty was often defined as desire for boys, not specifically referring to a sex act. As usual, definitions that assume a male agent (without specifying one) created space for understanding the word in ways not intended. The scope of meaning for “boys” or “children” used in these definitions did not necessarily align with the “beardless adolescent” of classical reference.
The chapter explores a variety of other terms for a male receptive partner, with their supposed origins. Most are of clearly non-English origin and fit with the pattern of distancing. One exception, in some definitions, is “leman”—a word that is found for a non-marital sexual partner regardless of gender. Some dictionaries connected it with French “le mignon” (which would imply a grammatically male partner) while other propose an English source meaning “lie-man, one who lies with a man,” including female partners.
The author suggests that a m/m definition was prevalent in the early 17th century, but gave way to a more general sense by the 18th century, at which point new etymologies were suggested, either French (l’aimant(e)) or Germanic (leof-man). As a proposed Germanic origin takes center stage, definitions that focus on m/m senses have disappeared.
[Note: I think the book has failed in not noting the earlier usage of the word in a generic sense, and its Old English origins incorporating the non-gendered sense of “man=person” with the meaning “loved one”. As it stands, the text implies a same-sex meaning was original and only later supplanted. But I may be misunderstanding the book’s intent, as it may be trying to say that in the 17th century (when dictionaries were beginning to be a thing) the same-sex sense was prevalent, rather than suggesting that it was the original meaning.]
There is a discussion of how there is an abundance of terms for a receptive male (same-sex) partner in contrast to fewer for the insertive partner, who is in many ways, assumed as the default. [Note: compare with Latin vocabulary where the insertive partner is simply a default “man” while there are specific terms for different types of receptive partner.] The projection of a “passive” role onto the receptive partner is parallel by grammatically passive constructions. The receptive partner “is fucked, is hired, is abused, is kept, is loved.” The exception being “semantically passive” constructions where he “suffers [an act]” which is a wording also found for female partners in m/f sex.
The lexicographers’ emphasis on foreign origins for words about non-normative sex extended to the quotations selected to illustrate them, which situate the subjects of the quotes distantly in time and space, rather than using equally-available passages referring to persons and events in England.
As a classical education could not help but touch on mythological examples of m/m love, the treatment of these situations and characters in dictionaries intended for scholars is instructive. At the same time that dictionaries are defining “ganymede” (as a noun) as a receptive male sexual partner, they describe Ganymede (the mythic character) simply as being “beloved” by Jupiter. This creates a circular logical failure when the same books define “love” in heterosexual terms. Though, again, this requires the lexicographers to exclude usage in which “love” and more explicit sexual terms are clearly used in same-sex contexts.
The treatment of Sappho and other classical women is included in this chapter, although f/f language in general is treated in the next chapter. Classical dictionaries discussing the Calisto myth focus on how Jupiter tricked her into sex, but omit that the disguise relied on an assumption of f/f desire (involving Diana). The latter motif comes to be admitted in 18th century references.
Treatments of the Iphis myth up through the 19th century give her no agency, despite Ovid’s text clearly depicting her as a desiring agent.
Sappho—in general early modern discourse—is handled in three ways: as a poet, in the Phaon story, and as a lover of women. Literary references of the time clearly acknowledge the last, but dictionary entries largely do not, with a few exceptions in woks aimed at an elite male audience, rather than a general one. “Aimed at” does some heavy lifting, as even dictionaries that explicitly describe their readership in male terms may have women in their subscriber lists.
In contrast, dictionaries that present themselves as aimed at a female readership omit reference to Sappho’s same-sex loves.
By the mid 19th century, dictionary references to Sappho might include rejections of the claims about f/f love (to “redeem” her reputation), while a few began acknowledging it. And, of course, any acknowledgement of Sappho’s same-sex reputation could take comfort in the knowledge that she was long ago and far away.
This chapter opens discussing how dictionaries explicitly presented themselves as censoring inappropriate language when aimed at an audience that included women. This sort of comment shows up as early as the later 18th century. Even the nature of what was being censored is censored, with explanations that it is aimed at “inelegant” words, rather than objectionable or obscene ones.
One can trace the fate of censored vocabulary when dictionary authors incorporated existing source material but filtered out specific topics and words that are identifiable by their absence in the resulting output. This can be seen especially when Latin-English dictionary contents that included words for f/f sex such as “fricatrix” or “tribas” are incorporated. E.g., a Latin supplement to a late 16th century dictionary includes “fricatrix” glossed vaguely as “she that useth unlawful venery” and more explicitly “tribas” as “such filthy women as abused their bodies one with another against kind.” The source material was incorporated into various 17th century works with similarly informative glosses. But later dictionaries derived from this material begin to omit these terms.
Tribade and fricatrix had already naturalized in French and English by the early 17th century, along with the calque “rubster” and the variant “confricatrix.” But when citation contexts are given for these terms, they emphasize distance in time (classical references) or space (e.g., Turkish examples). The attempt to distance sapphic terms from the English usage of the era of the publications is contradicted by use of the same words in poetry and theater from the early 17th century on.
As dictionaries became aimed at a more general readership in the 18th century, the significance of the f/f acts referred to is undermined, using phrases like “in imitation of intercourse,” or the words are excluded entirely.
There is a comparison of the f/f vocabulary recorded in Anne Lister’s diaries with the vocabulary admitted into dictionaries of her era. Similarly, the writings of diarist Hester Lynch (Thrale) Piozzi are noted as a source for the use of explicitly sapphic terms (in a documentary context) in the late 18th century.
One more general cause of the exclusion of sexual language during the later 18th century and after was a shift in libel laws that discouraged publication of more explicit language, especially when applied to specific individuals. Libel laws could also be used against the publication of “obscene” books, even when the language was not describing specific individuals. Thus, for nearly a century from the mid 18th to the mid 19th centuries, the inclusion of entries for same-sex topics fell to almost nothing. One dictionary of 1775 runs counter to this trend, with a large number of entries for sex-related topics, including same-sex ones. [Note: Turton doesn’t point out that this dictionary contains only m/m terms, based on my review of the listings in the appendix.] Despite this relative wealth of word entries, their definitions obscure the nature of the acts they reference.
Around the 1870s, there is a return to inclusion of m/m-related words in general dictionaries, but no similar return of f/f entries. When words such as “fricatrice” do make an appearance in general dictionaries, their glosses erase the same-sex aspect and simply define them as indicating a sexually loose woman.
During the period of absence, such words continued to be included in specialized medical dictionaries, and this was an era when same-sex attraction began to be medicalized.
Medical dictionaries were much more interested in tribades and fricatrices than any general reference works had been.
Discourse of the 18th century reflected the general dictionaries’ aversion to specifics, claiming that there was no vocabulary available for female same-sex acts, and using circumlocutions such as “liking her own sex in a criminal way.” [Note: Keep in mind that “criminal” in this case is being used by analogy to illegal m/f and m/m sex acts, while there is no indication that law courts considered f/f sex to be criminal. See Derry 2020 on this topic.]
Some of this lack of same-sex terminology in general dictionaries was made up for in a new genre: glossaries of cant and slang terms, which became popular in the 18-19th centuries as transgressive entertainment aimed at a male readership. While cant terms for m/m sex and its participants were frequent and imaginative in these books, vocabulary for f/f relations is virtually absent from them. Even at a time when “female husbands” were a stock topic of popular media, language for them is not included in cant/slang dictionaries, except to the extent that one might read it into words attributing masculinity to specific women. But mannishness is not directly associated with f/f sexuality in the definitions. The closest that slang dictionaries come to directly addressing f/f sex may be in entries referring to boarding schools and dildoes that hint at f/f possibilities.
This doesn’t mean that slang terms for lesbianism were absent from the historic record entirely. The later 18th century is when we have clear attestation of terms such as sapphic, sapphist, tommy, and (game of) flats in clearly sexual senses. (These are collected in some modern slang dictionaries, but were not included in slang dictionaries at that time.)
This deliberate omission can be seen, for example, in the revision notes for one 18th century slang dictionary that references “game at flats,” but then omits the phrase in the actual published version of the revised dictionary.
[Note: there is a discussion of a variety of slang terms for various sexual practices where the dictionary entries do not adequately indicate what the acts were – which makes me think of some of Anne Lister’s terminology, such as “grubbling” – suggesting that there may well have been a rich slang vocabulary for f/f sex that is entirely lost to us.]
In the 19th century, slang that originally had been presented as belonging to criminals and the lower classes shifted to being framed as associated with fashionable elite men. In this context, terms for f/f sexuality are not only not embraced, but those tangential references previously found (such as dildo) are flagged as obsolete, or even as entirely spurious. Even when included, we are told that the words refer to non-existent things.
Only finally in 1890 did a slang dictionary finally admit such terms as “cunnilingist,” “fuck-finger,” and “lesbian.”
This chapter compares the dearth of entries for f/f sexuality in general dictionaries in the 1750-1850 period with the wealth of discussion on those topics in medical dictionaries. The appearance of medical dictionaries as a genre aligned with an explosion of vernacular publishing in the health field in the 16-17th centuries. These were aimed not only at non-specialists, but at health workers outside the academic elite—people who didn’t have access to Latin literature. The publishing establishment operated as gatekeepers in terms of what material got published and how it was presented. Certain material was not considered appropriate for a female audience, even health workers such as midwives, and manuals aimed at the household market clearly understood their audience to primarily be women. Thus there was a concern to exclude material considered inappropriate for women to read. Within this context, the medicalization of sexuality began to emerge as a site of social control.
Non-normative sexuality could be seen as either a cause or a consequence of health problems. For example, the condition known as “malthacos” listed in a medical dictionary of 1745 is described as being associated with “molles” and “tribades” and discussed both as a congenital defect and an acquired vice, but is classed as a disease. In common with general dictionaries, the discussion of such words in medical texts either assume the reader knows what “molles” and “tribades” mean or leave it to guesswork for the reader to figure it out. The classical sources from which the medical dictionaries harvested “malthacos” saw it as a transgender condition—men taking the role of women, and women that of men—rather than homosexuality in the modern sense. But even this specificity is lost in the vague description of the medical dictionaries.
In contrast to general dictionaries, medical dictionaries had a particular fascination for f/f sex and especially with how it was performed. Given phallocentric assumptions, this focus centered around penetration and the use of the clitoris as a penis analogue. A particular interest was the relationship between anatomy and sexuality—how transgressive sex could change the body, and how aberrant anatomy could drive a person to participate in transgressive sex. The discussion touches on venereal diseases and intersex anatomy, but returns to the clitoris as its main example.
Discourse around the clitoris focused on it being an analogue to the penis, both in shape and function (with regard to pleasure). Variation in size of the clitoris was recognized by medical authorities and was use to reanalyze the theories of prior eras about “hermaphrodite” (intersex) bodies in order to fit them into a gender binary. But the more a clitoris fell outside what was considered the norm, the more it was treated as a medical condition to be addressed by prevention or correction. “Abuse” of the clitoris for pleasure—whether solo or with another woman—was thought to cause it to enlarge. But, in turn, the prevailing opinion was that a woman with a clitoris large enough to engage in penetration would be drawn to f/f sex. These beliefs appear at least from the 16th century on, although explicit terms for the women involved only begin to appear in medical dictionaries around the 1720s.
In addition to concerns about a variant clitoris causing/enabling f/f sex, medical texts alleged that it might interfere with m/f sex. For this, surgical removal was suggested lest it “hinder the enjoyment.” Given that the erotic sensitivity of the clitoris and labia were recognized in medical literature from at least the 17th century, the “enjoyment” being referenced was clearly that of the male partner. It isn’t clear to what extent this surgical approach was actually practiced in England. As with many topics, discussion in the medical dictionaries typically displaced the practice into foreign regions (Egypt and Arabia), and some texts specifically note that English women rarely have the anatomy that would require it. Another displacement intersects with anti-Catholic sentiment in connecting clitoral enlargement with f/f sexual activity in convents.
These general themes come together in a 1719 medical dictionary to explicitly attribute clitoral enlargement to engaging in f/f sex. A 1722 edition of the same work is the first of this genre to include a headword relating to f/f sex: “confricatrices” glossed as “lustful women who have learned to titillate one another with their clitoris.” The authors asserts the word was in common use (though probably mostly in Latin). A 1663 medical text had included it as a Latin word and glossed it with “rubster” (which presumably means that the word rubster was familiar to its readers).
A central theme in sex writing in the 17-18th centuries is that “sex” is defined by phallic penetration. Therefore, to the extent that authors discuss “sex between women” they are concerned only with practices that include penetration. [Note: I want to emphasize here that this doesn’t mean that women weren’t engaging in non-penetrative erotic activities, simply that those activities weren’t going to be discussed by medical authorities.] However discussions of “confricatrices” sometimes discuss their activity in mutual terms, not distinguishing an active/passive contrast. Other authors view such acts as asymmetrical and driven by the deviant anatomy of one woman, whose partner simply benefits by avoiding the risk of pregnancy. The possibility of either partner being inspired by an active desire for a female partner is not considered.
Although some historians of sexuality assert that the “macroclitoral” woman ceased to be of interest after the mid 18th century (based on the dismissal of erotic desire as a factor) Turton notes that medical texts of the later 18th century continue to repeat the motifs that enlargement of the clitoris is both caused by and results in erotic stimulation, with regular reference to “the tribades…of the ancients” or fricatrices, with reference to a preference for female partners.
This conjunction of motifs continues to appear in medical manuals of the 19th century, although there is a shift to emphasis on enlargement as a result of stimulation, thus making it a behavioral issue rather than an anatomical one. In addition to blurring distinctions between masturbation and f/f sex in connection with clitoral enlargement, some texts (e.g., one of 1791) mention the use of a dildo (using Greek “olisbos” and Latin “coriaceus”) as a source of sex-related ailments of women.
Anne Lister gives us a useful practical contrast to these professional assertions. She writes that she doubts that classical tribades all used dildos and she herself refused to use one (interestingly, she associates it with “sapphic” practices, suggesting that she had some clear distinction in mind with respect to her own practices). Explorations of her own body, inspired by medical texts discussing the clitoris, indicate that her own was not of notable size. Her comments on this exploration also suggest that the dictionary editors who worried about women “getting ideas” from explicit texts were not entirely wrong!
(There is a brief discussion of some additional vocabulary related to m/m sex, but I’m not entirely ignoring m/m topics, they simply aren’t the focus on this chapter.)
While earlier medical dictionaries had converted Greek and Latin terms into English forms (in parallel with practices in general dictionaries which sometimes created new English vocabulary from Greek/Latin words), the Victorian era saw a preference for retaining the original Greek and Latin words, and coinages from them, as a sort of “international scientific vocabulary.” The cross-cultural exchange of medical writing in the 19th century resulted in the establishment and spread of a common vocabulary for sexual topics, sometimes altering previous understandings of the meaning. As an example, some terms that in classical sources had referred to same-sex topics specifically were reinterpreted as referring either to homosexuality or masturbation with no distinction made. These medical definitions of sexual vocabulary were then projected back onto the classical texts in which they occurred, changing the context in which those takes were understood. Thus all words for participants in f/f sex were defined as meaning “tribade” and tribade was defined as a woman with an enlarged clitoris who takes an active role in sex with another woman. [Note: I have seen histories of sexuality that appear to accept these 19th century redefinitions as reflecting actual usage in other eras, especially in terms of concluding that “tribade” has always universally meant “a woman with a penetrative clitoris” from classical times onward. I view this with skepticism, especially given the semantic origins of the word.]
Medical theories of the effects of homosexuality on the body were invoked by legal bodies in respect to men suspected of sodomy, in contrast to the primarily medical (and moral) focus of concerns about women.
The author notes that this persistent and increasing medical discourse around homosexuality in the 18-19th centuries rather undermines the idea that sexology represented a dramatic shift in the late 19th century. He connects this observation with Traub’s “cycles of salience” in which concepts recur periodically in different forms across the centuries. The focus of sexology on psychological rather than physical models was the most distinguishing feature of the late 19th century. [Note: But even sexological theories about homosexuality placed a strong emphasis on somatic markers of orientation – the mannish woman, the effeminate man.]
The chapter concludes with a discussion of the physicality and materiality of dictionaries themselves – how they were printed, their size and scope, cost and distribution, and the resulting effects on accessibility to various potential readerships.
This chapter focuses on the philosophy, history, and development of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) specifically. The creation of the OED was a monumental project, delivered alphabetically in fascicles (separate installments of a larger work, meant to be bound into a single volume when complete). The fascicles were released beginning in the 1880s and completed in 1928, followed by a supplement in 1933 to catch up with developments in the previous half century.
The editors touted it as the “supreme development” of lexicography, “permeated…through and through with the scientific method.” This “scientific method” referred to use of historic data to trace the emergence and development of words and meanings. The process included massive numbers of volunteers identifying and contributing quotations from written sources to assist in creating the histories of words. However, like science itself, this method was deeply rooted in the Anglocentric and male-centered biases of its (white, male, English) editors. In addition to racial and gender biases, they carried over the mission of imposing a particular view of sexual morality on the contents.
The censoring of “bad words” was challenged by reviewers even at the beginning of the project, but the effect was not entirely due to editorial choice. A slang dictionary published in the 1890s unsuccessfully sued a printer for refusing to typeset the book, due to the “indecent” language it contained, but the courts determined that there was no inherent right to publish indecent language. This had a chilling effect even on the authors of scientific works.
Sexual matters, including same-sex acts, were a subject of popular and legislative interest during the period when the OED fascicles were being released. High profile legal cases such as the Wilde and Asquith trials and controversies over literary works by Swinburne and Hall placed this “indecent” vocabulary in the public record even as it was being refused a place in the dictionary.
Despite this censorship, the OED contained much more same-sex vocabulary than any previous dictionary. But even in terms of reproducing same-sex vocabulary present in earlier dictionaries, the OED is spotty. And sexual senses of words like “lesbian” were omitted, despite clear examples of usage in earlier works. As in earlier dictionaries, definitions were obscured and made vague, with references to “lewdness” or “unnatural lust” without specifying details. Tracing cross-references of words used in definitions, such as “copulation,” continued to provide circular and dead-end paths, due to heteronormativity. Another deliberate deficiency was the omission of citation quotations for specific senses of sexual vocabulary, or the source of a citation might be given, but not the text itself. For example, the OED’s working notes included a citation for “tribadism” from an edition of the 1001 Nights that had a neutral/positive tone, but this was in conflict with the negative definition it would have been attached to, and so was omitted.
In general, citations for f/f sex are drawn from medical and legal texts rather than literature and non-professional genres. This contributed to the continuing tradition of displacing the concrete specifics of f/f sex into other places and times.
The next section of this chapter explores the publications of sexologists as a source of neologisms for same-sex topics. The publication of sexology texts met with many of the same moral objections and barriers that explicit dictionaries (such as slang dictionaries) did. This new sexual vocabulary was, in general, not included in the original edition of the OED, thus omitting “homosexual” and “inversion” (in a gender/sexual sense). The OED became more open to such vocabulary as time passed, resulting in greater inclusion of sexual vocabulary toward the end of the alphabet.
The 1933 supplement to the OED had as its stated mission to include words and senses that had emerged in the previous half century. Thus the supplement added words such as “masochist” and “pervert” but continued to exclude others, notably “lesbian” and “lesbianism”—an exclusion that was protested (in vain) at the time.
Drafts of definitions show the ongoing battle between those trying to impose moral judgements on the sexologists’ vocabulary and those working to retain their less judgmental medical senses. (There is much more discussion of the definitions of same-sex vocabulary within the writings of the sexologists themselves.)
The next section of the chapter looks at how queer writers and communities created new senses of existing words, such as the common use by female couples of the language of marriage, the specially emphasized use of “friend” by female couples, etc. However the preference of the OED for published sources rather than private correspondence made it highly unlikely that such senses would be considered for inclusion.
This section discusses other dictionaries contemporary with or subsequent to the publication of the OED, and the ways in which they were indebted to it. This debt included reproducing some of its deficiencies.
But a new generation of dictionaries recognized the exclusion of the language of marginalized communities. The use of electronic corpus data revolutionized the ability to identify and include citations, reducing some of the bias inherent in funneling the editorial process through specific individual editors. Corpus data, however, adds a new veneer of objectivity onto a majoritarian approach that still has the tendency to erase or overlook word senses specific to minority communities.
The conflict between dictionaries as descriptive versus prescriptive continued, as compilers questioned the appropriateness of accepting words considered to be slang or not yet established in the lexicon. For example, in the 1970s, dictionary editors could still debate whether “gay” should be added as an acceptable formal equivalent for “homosexual.”
But the shift to electronic/online editions of dictionaries made the process of updating easier and more rapid.
Crowd-sourced dictionaries such as Wiktionary give marginalized communities more theoretical input, but de facto biases in the volunteer editors still affect the result. Crowd-sourcing can also open the potential for trolling and abusive content, particularly seen in the Urban Dictionary.
The presumption of authority given to the OED can result in users giving deference to its gaps and flaws, even in the face of counter-evidence. Hence the persistence of the claim that there was no identifiable lesbian identity in English until the 1920s, despite clear evidence of vocabulary for f/f sex in the 18th century and earlier. (The OED 3rd edition has corrected these omissions, but the myth of “no word for lesbian before the sexologists” persists in both formal and informal discussion. [Note: I regularly find myself countering this myth in social media spaces to this day.]
Further citations for queer vocabulary could be included if dictionaries expanded to include private correspondence among queer communities, where words are often well established long before they make their way into published material. This method could help fill in apparent discontinuities, such as the gap in OED citations for sapphic/sapphist between 1900 and 1933. Current citation sources also result in a bias toward male authors in citations for f/f terms, which in turn can result in a bias toward negative contexts.
This chapter ends with a summing up of the relevance of lexicography to studying queer history.
There are two appendices. The first is a transcript of Anne Lister’s hand-compiled glossary of sexual vocabulary. The second is a table, organized by headword, of the queer vocabulary in the dictionaries studied for this book.