I've always been fascinated by the etymology of everyday words - their evolutions can be amusing and surprisingly apt, and the origins often tell us nearly as much as the definition itself. No exception with the dirty words throughout history. Interesting to see many of these go from completely neutral assocations to become the loaded and often "obscene" terms we know today.

The following is a list of such words and their origins, updated as I find new ones. I've left out some of the more obvious desciptive sexual slang (bush, rod, slit, melons, and so on) and just stuck to the ones with more unusual beginnings. If you think up other words to look into (or have found alternate origins for any of these), send em on over...

*****

ass (or arse) – from the Old English aers, meaning “tail” or “rump”. Aers in turn derives from the Proto-Germanic word for the same anatomy, arsoz.

beaver – originated in the Roaring Twenties, evolved from female genitalia being described as a “pelt” in earlier slang

blowjob – mid-1900s USA. Origin uncertain. Maybe drawn from the earlier slang blowoff, to orgasm. Also, 18th century European prositutes were sometimes called blowers, though it's not proven that led to “blowjob” either.

bugger – from the French bougre, for Bulgarian. Named for a sect of Bulgarian heretics, the Bogomils, who emigrated to southern France in the 11th century. As is often the case with strange foreigners who arrive in new lands, many 'indecent' acts were attributed to them, including sodomy - though there's no evidence to indicate they had butt sex any more than the rest of the population.

clitoris – from the Greek kleitoris, a hill

cuckold – from the cuckoo bird, who customarily lays her eggs in another's bird's nest

cunnilingus – from Latin: cunnus “vulva”, lingere “to lick”

cunt – most directly from the Germanic “kunte” for vulva, although there were many similar-sounding words for female genitalia: the Latin “cunnus”, Old Norse “kunta”, ancient Egyptian “qefent”, even the Basque “kuna”. It's thought that these words may derive from the ancient proto-Indo-European word “kuni”, which essentially meant 'woman' and referred to anything feminine. Interesting to note that “cunt” was not always taboo – the word once had a neutral connotation and was used as an anatomical description (much like vulva or vagina today), though by the late 1500s it was considered a vulgar word.

dildo – Latin dilatare, “to open wide”

fellatio – from the Latin fellare, “to suck”

fetish – from the Portuguese feitiço, “a relic”, which is in turn derived from the Latin facticius, meaning “manufactured, artificial”

fuck - from the Old English word “fokken”, to beat against.

gamahuche – 19th century English term for oral sex, French origin

gams – from the Old French gambe, also meaning “leg”, though originally pertaining to heraldric illustrations rather than long-legged beauties

horny – from 18th century English slang describing a man's erection as a “horn”

hymen – from Hymenaeus, the Greek god of marriage and weddings

lecher – from Old French, meaning “to lick”

nookie – from the old Scottish noke, meaning “recess” or “crack”

orgasm – from the Greek orgasmos, “to swell with moisture”

penis – Latin for “tail”

poontang – Creole pronunciation of putain, the French word for “whore”

pussy – from Old German puse, “vulva”, or possibly the Old Norse puss, meaning “pocket” or “pouch”

schlong – Yiddish for “snake”

screw – from the Latin scrofa, meaning “to sow”

snatch – originally meant “a quick fuck”, later evolved to mean just female genitals

tits – an Old English word originally meaning “small”, but also used to describe women's nipples as early as the 12th century. Didn't come to mean the entire breasts until the 1920s.

twat – Old Norse thveit, meaning “slit”, “cut”, or sometimes “forest clearing”

vagina – Latin for “sheathe”