This is the title of an article in the on-line edition of Scientific American that I just looked at - well one has to, with a name like that. Of course, in the UK "turtle" means the sea-going chelonians that drift around and come ashore to lay eggs on beaches. In the US it can also mean tortoises and terrapins - and the article was in fact chiefly about tortoise penises - including an aside as to whether the tortoise's "intromittent organ" should be called a penis or a phallus. Well dearie!
The scientific world is full of these precise definitions which us mere writers are barely aware of. I was also fascinated to see the word intromission in real use. It is a word I once came across in some very personal correspondence - and I wondered at the time why the author was using such a very distancing sort of word when penetration would have been the more normal word to use of a human sexual relationship. Even if you are a biologist - do you really use the word intromission about a former girlfriend... what's that about? It's an interesting word - it exists as an adjective and a noun, but you don't hear it used as a verb - although it's obviously based on a Latin verb. "I shall die if I don't intromitt you forthwith!" - you can sort of imagine it being used in a Victorian pornographic novel...but I don't think any human being would really use it seriously in a personal context. So perhaps its use in that particular email suggested embarassment, withdrawal, distancing from the reality, or perhaps he's a lot more uptight... or perhaps it was a sort of ironic joke? I shall probably never know.
The scientific world is full of these precise definitions which us mere writers are barely aware of. I was also fascinated to see the word intromission in real use. It is a word I once came across in some very personal correspondence - and I wondered at the time why the author was using such a very distancing sort of word when penetration would have been the more normal word to use of a human sexual relationship. Even if you are a biologist - do you really use the word intromission about a former girlfriend... what's that about? It's an interesting word - it exists as an adjective and a noun, but you don't hear it used as a verb - although it's obviously based on a Latin verb. "I shall die if I don't intromitt you forthwith!" - you can sort of imagine it being used in a Victorian pornographic novel...but I don't think any human being would really use it seriously in a personal context. So perhaps its use in that particular email suggested embarassment, withdrawal, distancing from the reality, or perhaps he's a lot more uptight... or perhaps it was a sort of ironic joke? I shall probably never know.
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