Terminology
Ancient Greek and Latin had a great variety of terms for the testicles. Only a few of these have remained in use. Some years ago two Classical scholars, Horstmanhoff and Beukers, devoted a study to the subject. The Greek word for ball is orchis, which is found, for instance, in medical parlance. An ‘orchidectomy’ is an operation for the removal of the testicles, while an inflammation of a testicle as a result of mumps is known in the jargon as mumps orchitis. Orchids are so called because the tubers of the flower show some similarity to testicles. In the Middle Ages it was thought that the man who ate the biggest of these tubers would sire especially large children.
Testis means witness in Latin, as evidenced by such words as ‘testify’ and ‘testament’, a document drawn up by a lawyer and signed in the presence of witnesses. The Dutch expression ‘the lawyer and the witnesses’ for the penis and the testicles recalls this link, as does the phrase ‘the lawyer inside and the witnesses outside’ describing sexual intercourse with the penis in the vagina and the balls dangling outside. (Don’t assume that this can be taken for granted: a form of coitus exists in which both penis and balls are inserted in the vagina.)
All kinds of factors may give words that were originally neutral in meaning enhanced or diminished status, moving from obscene to scientific or alternatively from respectably descriptive to coarse. The Anglo-Saxon ‘bollocks’, for example, was for centuries a purely descriptive term (see its use in the medieval translation of Reynard the Fox below), but today is considered vulgar. It refers to the testicles, literally and figuratively, in widespread uses like ‘Bollocks!’ (nonsense), or ‘He thinks he’s the dog’s bollocks’ (He has an unduly high opinion of himself). Neither of these expressions is current in the usa.
‘Ball-bag’ and ‘nut-sack’ are current slang for ‘scrotum’, though they have not yet ousted the technical term in everyday usage. ‘Having balls’ is synonymous with having backbone and can be extended to resolute women like ex-premier Margaret Thatcher. Other informal words for testicles include crown jewels, goolies, nads and nadgers. In this book ‘testicles’, ‘testes’ and ‘balls’ are used indiscriminately.
Scrotum remains the standard medical term for the bag of skin containing the testicles. The word is a medieval form of scortum, hide or skin, which in Latin may have referred to a leather quiver. The concept of a scrotal ‘pouch’, less crude than ‘sack’ or ‘bag’, has a long history. The image is found, for example, in the medieval Dutch poem of Reynard the Fox, where Tibert the cat, venting his anger on a village priest, bites off the priest’s ‘stitchless satchel/with which a man rings the bell’ (in the translation of A. J. Barnouw and E. College). This castration scene contains a number of other euphemisms, including ‘thing’, ‘innards’ and a little later ‘bells’. In one version of the poem, that used by William Caxton for his 1481 translation, it is clear that the castration is in fact only partial: the priest loses, we are told, ‘his right cullion or ballock stone’. The use of the ecclesiastic image of bells is noteworthy. In Sylvia Hubers’ contemporary poem ‘Of Course!’ the bells make a challenging comeback:
Of course!
I’ve got rat-arsed again.
Of course
Can’t put one foot in front of the other anymore.
But it’s too late now for kiddies’ games.
Come on now, it’s your turn to show me some of that bell-ringing
you’ve spent all evening bragging about!!
In the same way that ‘bag’ or ‘sack’ are not particularly kind terms for scrotum, but are common, the same is true of ‘ball’ for testicle. To turn to failing virility for a moment: ‘brewer’s droop’ is temporary, alcohol-induced impotence, while being ‘out of gas’ may describe a more permanent condition.
Greek and Latin had a plethora of words for penis, only a few of which are still current. It is often difficult to determine why one word has survived and another has not. Most are metaphors, and the most obvious references are to length, cylindrical form and vertical position. Sometimes the image was of the stalk of a plant, the shaft of a spear or
the blade of a sword, sometimes the upright warp of a woven fabric (stema in Greek) or the bronze-plated, wedge-shaped ship’s nose (embolon) with which vessels tried to ram each other in ancient sea battles. The usual anatomical name for the female sexual organ, ‘vagina’ (sheath), is a perfect complement to the blade of the sword, while the term ‘ejaculation’ relates to Latin iaculum (a small spear). So that an eiaculatio is the hurling of one’s seed, like a spear. Ample imagery to choose from. The choice eventually fell on ‘penis’, though the precise origin remains vague. Some philologists see it as deriving from the Latin verb pendere (hang, droop), which might be seen as appropriate in some cases.
Penis, then, has made it big. Any English-speaker wanting to avoid four-letter words and graphic Anglo-Saxon terms will undoubtedly resort to this scientific designation. The previously mentioned Classicists Horstmanshoff and Beukers regard the now archaic man’s yard, like Dutch roede (rod), German Ruthe and French verge, as loan translations of the Arabic al-kamarah, a term used in antiquity in the influential Arab medical literature. Via Latin virga (twig, branch) the image was adopted by Western European languages.
Sanskrit on the other hand uses completely different metaphors for the male member, while Sheikh Nefzawi’s Perfumed Garden mentions, for example:
the dove, because the moment it begins to flag, the stiff penis resembles a dove brooding its eggs.
the tinkler, because every time it enters and leaves the vagina, the member makes a sound.
the untamable one, because as soon as it is erect it starts to move and does not stop till it has found the entrance to the vulva, which it then shamelessly penetrates without so much as a by-your-leave.
the liberator, since by penetrating the vulva of a woman who has been thrice rejected, it gives this woman the freedom to return to her first husband.
the rod, since the member inches slowly up the woman’s thighs towards her mons Veneris and creeps inside, until it has nestled there to its satisfaction and achieves an ejaculation.
the crowbar, since if access to the vulva is difficult, the member
as it were forces its way in, breaking and trampling everything in its path, like a wild animal on heat.
the bald one, since the member is hairless!
In the Middle Ages, according to the Dutch writer Hans van Straten, the penis was called the caulis, or stalk, referring to its rigid state. A host of designations from Shakespearean times and later include: thing, anchovy, tree of life, shuttle, manhood, artillery, baldpate friar, glister syringe, devil, pintle, yard, jiggumbob, monkey’s tail, bodkin, pego, chitterling, whim-wham, shaft, date, key, robin, bilbo, sceptre, flute, nutcracker, date, maypole, spoon, thorn, wand, mast, quill, touch — finger, sword, tarriwang and crest. The wealth of contemporary terms is easily accessible online.