Felicia Davin
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fantasy romance

A collection of 28 posts
Let's have a bouba
body or sex words

Let's have a bouba

BOOBS, n. This term for breasts shows up in print in US English for the first time in 1929, which means people were saying it before that. “Boobies” is older than just plain “boobs,” and it’s a variation on “bubbies,” which goes all the way back to the 1600s
14 Feb 2021 4 min read
To have the horn
body or sex words

To have the horn

HORNY, adj. I wanted to know if I could use “horny,” as in “lustful,” in my current novel draft without it being an anachronism, and I am thrilled to report that Green’s Dictionary of Slang has the first recorded instance of “horny” as “sexually eager” in 1826 in US
13 Dec 2020 11 min read
US history

Shoe against the machine

SABOTAGE, n. I caught myself repeating this word’s famous folk etymology in conversation this week—namely, that “sabotage” as in an act of deliberate obstruction/destruction comes from French sabot (clog, as in a peasant’s shoe), which is true, and that the word “sabotage” comes to us from
17 Nov 2019 11 min read
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