LHMP #568 Turton 2023 My Use of the Word Love

[Note: check out Turton’s other articles on queer lexicography, especially Turton 2024. I’ll be skipping briefly over some topics he covers in those.]

This article, rather than focusing only on Lister’s sexual vocabulary, begins by examining her relationship and that of other lesbians to dictionaries and their coverage (or mostly lack thereof) of lesbian related vocabulary. Attempts to fill the gaps in this coverage – or at least commentary on the gaps – has included poet Judy Grahn’s invention of a history and definition for “bulldyke” when she could find none in existing publications, or Wittig and Zeig’s Lesbian Peoples: Materials for a Dictionary, which symbolically left a blank page for the entry on Sappho.

Lister engaged with dictionaries in multiple ways: compiling a glossary of sexual vocabulary she found and eventually collecting as many as 39 dictionaries, both for language learning and specialized reference works. Using Lister’s extensive catalog of the books she owned and read, Turton explores her access to sexual vocabulary and her creation or adoption of words for her topics of special interest.

Lister’s journals document how she used dictionaries, not only for definitions, but to learn to correct spelling and pronunciation. Dictionaries of her time recognized that men’s and women’s use of language could differ, but – being written by men – this usually meant disparaging female usage and stylistics. Lexicographical sexism also meant that examples of usage were drawn from male authors even when the words were described as “women’s cant.”

Dictionary definitions of sexual vocabulary were often concealed by using Latin, under the assumption that few women would have access by that means. Lister was not immune to the impulse to control (other) women’s speech, disapproving of even her close friends using “vulgar language” that was no different from what she herself used in her own journals.

Lister was exposed to words like “tribade” and “olisbos” (dildo) via Latin and Greek dictionaries, as well as through classical literature. Medical dictionaries introduced her to words such as “clitoris” (see previous article) and their associated concepts such as “clitorisme” (to engage in sex with a woman using a clitoris).

Lister picked up and used slang and euphemistic terms for sexual concepts from her reading, but she also used terms that she may have invented – or at least, for which she is the earliest or only record. Her use of “queer” to refer to the genitals (evidently of either sex) has been explored in detail. (See Lanser 2003.) It isn’t always clear whether she used these terms in conversation or only in her journal. In some cases, she alternates a more common term, such as “courses” for menstruation, with a more idiosyncratic (or dialectal?) one like “cousin” for the same.

There are examples where it’s reasonably clear that Lister invented an expression, as when her journal traces the development of “going to Italy” to indicate a specific type of relationship, and provides many examples of it being used in conversations with Mrs. Barlow.

Another example of listers linguistic inventiveness was the development of a symbolic vocabulary for specific sex acts (a + or X or “cross” for orgasm, a glyph probably representing Greek “os” for the sex act she euphemized as “kiss”) as well as adopting specific symbols to name intimate friends.

Sometimes the ambiguity of ordinary words led her to clarify her meaning, as when she explained to Mary Vallance what she meant by “love” in order to make sure Vallance was answering the correct question. Lister (in common with many other female couples) used the language of marriage (marry, marriage, husband, wife, mistress) to talk about her relationships.

The lack of many surviving records from Lister’s correspondents makes it hard to determine which of her sexual vocabulary was shared, but there is at least one entry in Ann Walker’s diary where “k[iss]” is used in an implied sexual context. It would not be surprising if this usage was more common as it parallels French “baiser” with the same dual meeting.

The article notes a pre-existing use of “grubble” to mean sexual fondling or groping. There is also a discussion of the context of listers disparagement of “sapphic” love, which she associates specifically with a dildo.

[Note: It could be hard to determine whether this is a personal definition, or a product of the tendency of literature that uses the word “sapphic” to also participate in the 18th century fascination with dildos. I hope to be able to explore this question further as I expand my database of vocabulary examples – just as I want to question the assertion that the word “tribade” was strongly associated with the motif of the macro-clitoral lesbian.]

Looking at dictionaries from another direction, Lister herself has entered the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography as part of an attempt to redress the work’s gender bias (expanding the work’s original 5% female content to 10%).

As Turton documents extensively in his 2024 book, vocabulary about female sexuality, and especially lesbianism, was deliberately excluded from the intended-to-be-comprehensive Oxford English Dictionary until its second supplement, published in 1972-86. But although the OED has made an attempt to include more women’s writing in its citation sources, none of the citations for “sapphic” are by a female author. Lister’s writings are cited under eight dictionary entries, none of them related to sexuality.