One uses the equivalents, if those are what you refer to, as context requires. For example, 'fornicate' in discussing
spintria. Well within my adult lifetime, the OUP did limit what they would print, and Sir John Beazley, describing vase-paintings where
satyrs are doing it, masturbating, just formed an otherwise unattested but properly formed middle-voice present participle of the verb
dephô, infinitive
depheîn which, in context, made perfectly plain what the
satyrs were doing. No, I cannot post those pictures here; they would be offensive to some. The OUP actually would not print that M word. The
standard was the old one that prevailed for the translation of the Arabian Nights: print nothing harmful to the purity
virginibus puerisque. Consequently, Sir Richard
Burton made up a previously non-existent verb, 'futter', simply by anglicizing the
French one. I always suspected that there were guys at the OUP who themselves enjoyed keeping, as Beazley surely did, a
bit of their Schoolboy humor, Public School humor, alive by these policies. The assumption that it's safer for the educated than for the illiterate to have this kind of fun with words is itself bemusing as well as amusing.
Pat L.
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