And speaking of resolutely clean-minded, there's an establishment here in Oakland called Pump It Up: The Inflatable Party Zone...

I make boxes as part of my bookbinding. I was making one for my boss, as a gift from a group of fellow colleagues. One of them Skyped me (in English, but clearly thinking in Dutch) to ask how it was going: "How is your box?"

Then, swiftly, before I could even tell him I had just finished gluing the sides, he typed, "How is the box that you're making?" I could practically see the blush, 10 km away.

-----
* along with "muts", which is what a Canadian would call a toque.

Tuque.

Or... hell, I don't know. It's a bit of a comic moment in the performance. (An early "Oooh, doughnuts!" moment?) People laughed. I laughed. Maybe I didn't get the joke.

And who might those be?

Or just oblivious, or not aware of that idiom. If I'd been presented with that headline without the story and without being told that it had smutty implications, I'd have had no idea what a "love box" might be.

The other instance I can think of off-hand isn't nearly as fun. In "The trumpet shall sound," he consistently sets the word "incorruptible as "inCORrupTIble." (i.e., it's misaccented.) Some editions fix this by having the bass soloist sing "be raised incorruptible" in place of "inCORrupTIble." (This makes more sense when you look at the music.)

I thought the same when I watched this advertisement for Ball Busters. It can't be real, can it?

What on earth is a toque/tuque?

I doubt it was regional. Probably just a coincidence. Maybe there was a smutty joke currently running through the school? I seem to recall that the reaction took the music teacher by surprise, too.

I'm just glad I wasn't the only one who thought of that sketch...
:-)

But then, I'm not American...

Including me, I guess, since this is the first I'd heard about "Amahl and the Night Visitors" having double entendres. My little sister loved that song, and went around singing it, and my parents didn't act like there was anything off-color about it.

Anyone care to define it for me? Please?

Mikael@27: When being used in a nod-nod, wink-wink sort of way by Americans, 'box' is synonymous with vagina. Well, with smutty euphemisms for vagina, anyway. It is considered an extremely crude turn of phrase, and was more common in the 70s than it is now.

On somewhat the same track, but not sexual, the MBTA has come up with the slogan "Driven by Customer Service," printed on the jackets worn by the workers in the stations. This supposed to be reassuring?

Sigh.

Serge @5: Tüeque.

One of my professors in veterinary school -- a very staid British fellow -- tried to tell a joke to our class one day, while waiting for something. He told us the one about the pussy on the roof. At the end of the joke we all exploded with laughter, with relief that finally, we could laugh.

Google on "little love box," (or "hot love box," or "juicy love box") and see what you get. (Hint: Don't try this at work. ("Hot little juicy love box" appears only one place in the entire Google-indexed web: In Atlanta Nights, or quotes from Atlanta Nights).)

(He also refused to believe that the song "You must have come in a taxi" referred simply to arrival. We used to have terrible fights about it.)

I am highly susceptible to double-entendres involving 'package,' however.

'Pussy' barely even qualifies as a double-entendre - at least in my local linguistic grouping, anyone who chooses it over 'cat,' 'kitty' and even 'kitteh,' is probably doing so with a specific semantic goal in mind.

Speaking of resolutely clean minded, I just read that Atlanta Nights quote as "Hot little juice box love."

And then, flipping back to dirty, that conjured all sorts of strange images in my head.

I see, what many Australians would call a beanie, though they can have pompoms/bobbles/whateveryouwanttocallthem on top too. The alternative form of 'chook', speaking of unfortunate concepts, is likely to cause Australians to picture someone wearing a barnyard fowl on their head, however.

Regards
Jo

Let's ask Mrs. Slocombe about this.

No, it was in common usage at one time. I remember hearing it (and using it, I was a foul-mouthed kid) fairly often during the early and mid-sixties.

You've just made me happy that a certain Australian department store chain is no longer called Grace Bros, in which case you've all done very well...

Regards
Jo

There is a store in San Luis Obispo called "Johnsons for Children". I may have splorted coffee, and the gentleman I was with was in no better case.

The euphemism that gets me is "pink," particularly thanks to all the Victoria's Secret "University of Pink" merchandise.

I shall never open my mouth again for fear of what I might unintentionally say. I shall go and stroke my, er, cat instead.

Slang is an interesting thing, isn't it?

Did I ever mention the phone book ad I saw for a lawyer named Richard Peniston? I am not making that up.

The hat called a toque/tuque is called a toboggan in the Southern US. I am not sure why.

When my boyfriend's family moved down from Michigan, watched the news, and saw reports that a "robber was wearing a red toboggan" -- well, hilarity ensued.

Serge @41 Tique. Oh, never mind. I thought it was funny after midnight, now I'm not so sure. (sigh) Because "toque" is an open vowel, and "tuque" a more closed one, I closed it a lot more with the Swiss double-umlaut we all know and love from "müesli". Unless we're not German speakers, in which case we only go with a single transliterated umlaut with the "muesli" spelling Firefox's spell checker prefers. By perceiving what could be construed as a progression, then facetiously attempting to continue that progression in a way unexpected to the reader, I consciously violated the reader's expectations, with the intent of provoking the perception of a humorous, even dare I say jocular, situation.

Well, heck. Explaining it doesn't make a joke funnier. Who knew?

For your further educational needs, let me present Big Johnson tee-shirts and Rigid Tools (famous for their calendars).

Actually it's a meta-setting with hilarious consequences. For whatever reason--perhaps those 4.5 beats, perhaps the ensuing vocal lines on "astray", I have yet to hear a pick-up chorus that does not go *totally* astray during "have gone astray". It's got more scope than just about anything else in the whole oratorio.

Finbarr Saunders and his Double Entendres is a strip in grown-up comic book Viz, wherein young Finbarr mishears all sorts of innocent terms and phrases as double entendres until the last frame of the strip, generally showing his mother having sex with someone and commenting enthusiastically on it, at which point the eavesdropping Finbarr finds some perfectly innocent meaning for the genuinely sex-dripping terms in use.

Okay, that made me LOL.

As in many other cases, the packaging is far more diverting than the contents.

I was told, when I asked about the origin of the term "lunchbox" in Britain, that a traditional lunch was a sausage and two eggs.

I cannot attest to the truth of this story.

Unfortunately, she was clean-minded enough to entitle her memo "Special Things You Can Do with Your Wang."

"Package", on the other hand, definitely pings my double-entendre meter.

But I have never heard anyone refer to a knitted cap as a toboggan. I call them "ski caps" but my teenagers call them "koozies". "Koozie" to me means the soft foam thing you put around a canned drink to keep it cold.

Ah, language.

The one I remember is a song called "That Big Long Sliding Thing" about a trombone player.

Ah, Herb Caen, Mike Royko, Studs Terkel...giants one and all.

debcha @64 Marna's comment made me grin but your follow-up had me LOL

Caroline @50 Is it unreasonable to ask how young?

Mind you, my (older) British boyfriend claims it was categorically cited in his Dictionary of American Slang ca. 1966

As an example of how slang changes, the thought of a calendar of "rigid tools" mostly makes me wonder why anyone would want to spend a year looking at awkward and poorly-posed yes-men and petty enforcers of the status quo.

Bob Devny @ 68: "Unfortunately, she was clean-minded enough to entitle her memo "Special Things You Can Do with Your Wang.""

Clean-mindedness is like travelling around the globe--go far enough, and eventually you come out the other side.

I'm sure I wasn't the only one trying to shake "Every time you masturbate, God kills a kitten" out of my mind while shopping there.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Every_time_you_masturbate..._God_kills_a_kitten

Lila, #69: I once encountered a crafts-fair vendor selling koozies (the can-insulator kind) which were covered with flashy fabric prints and embellished with sequins and feathers. She called them "Floozies". I have never used a koozie in my life, but I had to buy one just because of the pun!

Thank god for them.

Especially the editor who let the headline:

"Can Obama Escape the Taint of Blagojevitch?"

past.

Who are Captain Peacock and Mrs. Slocombe?

Regards
Jo

Are You Being Served? was a British comedy set in a Department Store full of innuendo & double entendre*.

*Including the title.

There is a tradition of double-entendre songs that can be found in collections of old jazz records,

i remember a jazz singer on teri gross talking about how her older relatives would give her looks, as a child, if she sang the lament about "no mail in my mailbox."
as a variation on the virginity jokes above, i once heard jon favreau on late-night tv quip that he "play[s] in the box my kids came in."

reflecting, i would say that i've only heard the term as part of a joke or a double entendre, never straightforwardly.

As a baseball fan, the fact that a (Hall of Fame-caliber) pitcher named Randy Johnson is actually nicknamed "The Big Unit" amuses me. He's 6 feet 10, in fact.

Henry Purcell wrote a lot of naughty stuff:

Young Collin cleaving of a Beam
At every thumping blow cried Hem!
And told his wife who the cause would know
That Hem! made the wedge much farther go.
Plump Joan at Night to Bed they came
And both were playing at the same
Cried Hem! Prithee Collin do,
If ever thou Love'dst me Dear Hem! now;
He laughing answered no, no, no
Some work will split with half a blow;
Besides now I bore,
I Hem! when I cleave but now I bore.

"Has the doctor seen her, Fanny?"
"Yes, and he said there was little hope."

The actor involved, Greene claims, invariably omitted the comma, but the director insisted, right up until two-thirds of the way through opening night, that Greene was merely being puerile.

(This is also the book that brought us the memorable line "When the strage directions said he shot himself, there must have been a misprint."

NEVER have beans on toast for supper if you have to go on stage.

It was about playing the piano, which was patently clear from the verses, but still gave radio stations pause.

The album it was on, 'Sex, Dope, Rock'n'Roll - Teenage Heaven' was actually banned for a while.

The chorus went:
'Oh baby let me bang your box, baby let me bang your box
Baby let me bang your box, hey baby let me bang your box
Well baby let me play your eighty-eight
I'm gonna bang 'til the whole house rocks.'

"Hi, I'm Plenty."
"But of course you are."
"Plenty O'Toole."
"Named after your father perhaps?"

"Which of these instruments do you play?
"Bull Fiddle."
"Oh, fascinating! Do you use a bow or do you just pluck it?"
"Most of the time I like to slap it!"

Hodge told Sue
The whole of his tale
Which tickled her fancy.

Because of the way part-songs work, this eventually gets around to "Tickled her tale" then "Tickled her whole."

Lee @ #80, that's awesome!

In general: there's a horribly bawdy old riddle about women and a habit they have: "...they put it in, and then they move it/which makes it melt, and then they love it...." (It gets worse than that, and the answer is eating gooseberries.)

(Said comment was after I offered to add friction hinges to the top of the toybox so it wouldn't slam down uncontrolled.)

I'm sure she was puzzled why I turned beet red after making a perfectly innocuous comment...

There was something else I wanted to comment on, but forgot by the time I read to the end. Ah well. "Toique".

Lee @ 80, how interesting! I truly thought "toboggan" was the word used all over the Southeast. Now I want to map it out. I wonder if it's secretly just an NC thing, or what.

*Native Australian tree, there's also a yellow box at least.

[bows]

Shadowsong (#70):

A fellow Freezepop fan! "Do You Like My Wang?" always make me grin; for those of you who may also be amused by the intersection of computer geekiness and sexual innuendo, you can download the MP3 here.

Oh ghods yes. I've sung (chorus) in several performances where that was one of the sections cut.

(Now I'm wondering if there's a Messiah sing-along over here on Bainbridge, and if so, if I could actually sing enough. Six years of chronic bronchitis, but my doctor's taken me off inhalers this month and *crosses fingers* so far I'm doing OK...)

I once managed to keep my face politely smiling while a 10 year old at a party played a tune I knew only as "The Bonnie Wee Lassie Who Never Said No" on a flute.

Football's good for a few double entendre's per match especially when David Seaman (occasionally nick-named Spunky) used to play. Being a goally Seaman was always in the box and forever getting lobbed. Playing for Man City (hmmm) he was often seen spurting from the Bell End (actually the Colin Bell Stand, but we know what they meant).

When he was number one for England, his main rival was Tim Flowers prompting the question "Do you prefer Seaman or Flowers?"

Sometimes he would get pulled off at half time (usually, though, he'd just get an orange).

That reminds me of the time the San Francisco Symphony played The Planets: they got quite a few titters from the audience when the organ got stuck at the end of Uranus.

It was done in order to prevent having John Craven (of John Craven's Newsround) giving news reports to children on rings around Uranus, craters on Uranus and, of course, probing Uranus.

I did, however, watch NASCAR every week just so I could hear the announcers talking about "Dick Trickles". Never got old.

And not once, but twice, I have answered the question of why I don't like peas with, "it's just their pea-ness". I'm pretty sure the next time it comes up I'll remember to THINK before talking.

"Yeah," he said, "but that kind is so good, I usually end up having the whole box."

I don't know how I managed to keep a straight face, but I'm quite proud of myself for it.

(One of the major Mexico-based baking companies is called "Grupo Bimbo". Recently it bought the U.S. subsidiary of another company.)

One of the rudest double-entendre generators in modern British broadcasting available to all ages is the antidote to panel games I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue, where each week presenter Humphrey Lyttleton would pass on some reason why his nubile (and fictional) assistant Samantha had to leave early - one one occasion to see a gentleman friend who kept birds: "He keeps a young chicken, but Samantha says there are also wild breeds there, and she can't wait to see his Woodcock, Pullet and Swallow."

http://www.ivorysky.com/isihac/index.php for more. Some, as the man says, need to be read out loud for full effect.

RE: Richard Head. In secondary school our maths(?) textbook was edited by Richard Head. Much giggling during the first few weeks of term.

But she had a bit of trouble at one academic presentation when she started explaining about the pness of her orbitals.

I've seen at least one of their trucks in the DC area. Good to know this is a reputable business.

It is now the Citi Performing Arts Center, but the best (mis)usage of the old name happened back in the 90s when providing recorded information over the telephone was how everyone was going to get rich. There was a number to call for show times. You dialed, pressed the pound key and then a theater name. Whoever wrote the radio ads had a clean enough mind to end them with a hearty:

"Remember, for the best in Boston entertainment - Pound Wang!"

I don't know if the urology department is in that building, though.

Not so much for poor old Dick Head as for the fact that it reminded me of the Fish Heads Song.

"... eat them up, yum!"

(omgmakeitstop stoppitstoppit sendhelp...)

Ginger, #124: We see those trucks everywhere in Houston. And it makes me giggle every time. Yes, I'm twelve.

sherrold, #126: Now you've nailed me with an earworm of "The Lusty Young Smith". Not the song you're seeking, but I've always been sorry that there wasn't a non-bawdy variant, because the chorus is so wonderfully suited to a kids' song. "With a jingle bang-jingle bang-jingle heigh-ho!"

This seems like a good place to talk about Austin Peay State University in Clarksville, TN. College kids being college kids, their standard cheer is, "Let's go, Peay! Let's go, Peay!" Back when I was at Vandy, they had a particularly outstanding basketball player by the name of James "Fly" Williams, and actually got into the NCAA regionals one year. Since the Southeast Regional was being hosted by Vandy, they were able to send a large contingent of students, who at one point made it onto national TV displaying a sign that said, "The Fly Is Open -- Let's Go, Peay!"

On the 14th of May, at the break of the day
With me gun on me shoulder to the woods I did stray
Pack of cards in me pocket, me fiddle and all
And tucked down me trousers, me long peggin' awl

I met a young girl with her cheeks as a rose
Says I, can you tell me where the bonny black hare goes?
Well now, me kind sir, I've not seen it today
But I saw it last Tuesday over Gimmingham way.

Oh no, I insisted, you misunderstand
'Tis on your cuckoo's nest that I would lay my hand
If it's Cuckoos you want sir, 'tis quite plain to me
That the best thing for you is to go climb a tree

My dear pretty maiden it is surely no riddle
Just allow me to play you a tune on my fiddle
But sir, since you carry no baggage at all
Then this fiddle you play must be wondrous small

I am sure that my wishes could fit in with yours
So may I suggest a game of all fours?
Oh sir, I'm afraid that you must be some joker
For 'tis clear that the game you desire is poker

With that the girl turned away and was gone
Leaving this young man quite clearly undone
He took out his powder, his bullets as well
Then drew out his ramrod and there shot himself .

We bought my son one of those on Saturday. But I wouldn't have called it a watch cap, though it is a muts.

My idea of a watch cap is much more like Terry's, I think - there is no stiffened element, but there is a bit that turns up, all round, like the cuff on the sleeve of a sweater.

There might be a regional component to this; I am from California, as is Terry (I think).

(...must NOT... make joke... must resist...)

None of the things that I am tempted to say would leave you with any shreds of respect for my delicacy or character.

I assure you that my mind was, at the time, entirely innocent of any additional nuance. This is no longer the case.

But of course.
(A likely story.)

I called it a watch cap *before* I lived in California.

I won't inflict any of the actual dances or Ale songs on you (unless you click the links ;-), but I wanted to share an old music-hall ditty I learned from Tony Barrand:

Wiiiith hiiiiis
Rum-ti-ara, rum-ti-ara
Rum-ti-ara-day,
That fellow who played the trombone,
He stole my wife away.
He pulled that long thing in and out,
He made her feel so gay.
He really tickled her fancy
With his rum-ti-ara-day!

Maybe if I infect someone else I can get it out of my head. Sheesh.

Oh, and Sherrold@126: that rings a bell. Is it Too High or Else Too Low?

It was done in order to prevent having John Craven (of John Craven's Newsround) giving news reports to children on rings around Uranus, craters on Uranus and, of course, probing Uranus.

Or possibly because the research team at JPL(?) were dancing around singing "rings around Uranus, rings around Uranus" to the annoying singsong tune of "ring around the bathtub" from a cleaning product ad.

"Well, I used to work in a dress shop, and we ALWAYS steamed before we put out!"

It's _difficult_ to hold in that level of immediate-reaction laughter (so as not to get puzzled looks from the rest of the call center)...

So these do happen in real life, yes.

--Dave

When I read coffeedryad's description, I think of something like this. Although that hat doesn't really have the rolled up edge that I'm most familiar with, it could easily have one. "Beanie visor" seems to be a good search term for them.

I first heard the term from my first stepfather (who, was from Shaker Heights, Ohio; my mother's side of the family being from Cleveland. The mid-west, Ohio and Indiana are where I was resident prior to the age of reason).

He got it, so far as I know, from his time in the Navy.

The one's I have now were all issued to me by the Army.

http://animalattraction.com/

"People who understand how it feels to love animals and be loved by one."

Maybe it's just me, but "dating site for pet-owners" was not the first thing to come to mind. :P

Yes, I snickered.

It just kind of popped up during my search for another name.

37 ::: JonathanMoeller: You'd think a guy with a last name like Head would know better than to open up the Pandora's Box of sexual wordplay.

Surprisingly, nobody picked up on the "box" reference. This supports my contention that it's a context-dependent idiom.

In a 2,000-square-foot industrial walk-in cooler at Brooklyn’s Peter Luger Steak House, steaks have been dry-aged to perfection for more than 100 years.

Imagine my surprise to discover that Finbarr Saunders is running for the Knoxville City Council.

Knocks-ville? Fnarr fnarr!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julia_Lee_%28musician%29

...developed an unpleasant inflammation. This time, it was stronger than ever, with a pussy discharge and a continuous low-grade fever.

I mean, it was my cat, but it was my roommate's poster.

What's the difference between purulent and pustulent*? I didn't know purulent, but I've used pustulent, though only as invective.

*Googling those two words together gave me unpleasant insight into what's wrong with Google News.

(I could have sworn I'd bookmarked the version showing him live, but apparently not.)