Tongue-tied over sex words

There was one word in particular which stood out for Mark Morton after a year spent researching and writing his new book on the origin of words about sex and love. The University of Winnipeg English assistant professor who wrote The Lover`s Tongue: A Merry Romp Through the Language of Love and Sex found himself particularly attracted to the word "merkin." A merkin is a device best described as a pubic wig, and it was used to mask a particular side-effect of the syphilis which raged through much of 18th-century European aristocracy: Total hair loss. "I love that word for so many reasons," says Morton, with the enthusiasm of a man both entirely engaged in the English language and possessing a healthy interest in human sexuality. "It`s a great word," he said, remarking not only on how intersting it sounds but how "the very existence of a thing like that reveals so much about the culture which produced it." Morton, who also serves as a language columnist on CBC Radio`s Definitely Not the Opera, has written two other books: Cupboard of Love: A Dictionary of Culinary Curiosities and The End: Closing Words for a Millennium. His interest in words stems back to a childhood spent on a farm in Saskatchewan, where he remembers being fascinated by his parents` collection of old dictionaries. Morton went on to earn his PhD in literature and later tackle writing of his own, though he had to take a break after he took a turn toward the obsessive while writing Cupboard of Love. "For a while I couldn`t have a conversation without thinking about the words people were using," he says. Fortunately he isn`t having that problem after writing The Lover`s Tongue, which he sees as a natural evolution from a book on words about food. Morton has had to contend with some fellow academics` tongue-clucking and of course, his mother, who enjoyed Cupboard of Love but remains somewhat shocked at the content of his latest offering. The Lover`s Tongue is split into chapters -- which Morton advises are best read one at a time -- on everything including kissing, wooing and seducing, love, a fitting and intentionally brief conclusionary climax on the orgasm and a 15-page chapter titled The Ins and Outs of the In-and-Out: Copulation Words. In one section, dubbed The Long and Short of It, Morton painstakingly lists some 1,300 words used to describe the penis, including the entire "one-eyed" series, the ever-popular "willy," the surprising "Senator Packwood," and the British "tallywhacker." When asked if he thinks there are any words he`s missed, Morton, who provided "lascivious intermission etymology" during his Oct. 10 Ottawa Writers Festival appearance at Durtygurls: An Erotic Evening, concedes though his research was exhaustive, the list is probably anything but. "I suspect there are probably hundreds and hundreds of other words for the penis that never got recorded," he said. "And so they`ve been lost in a sense."