On the Etymology of Ejaculation – “I’m Cumming” vs. “I’m Coming”
Am I the only one that hiccups to a brief, awkward stop when I read the word “come” in a sexual description?
C-O-M-E come, like in “come here boy.” Or, more perplexing to me, like in “and in that moment, sweaty-handed, I felt her coming beneath me,” etc.
We have a word for getting off, the ejaculatory part of it. Actually we have a lot of words for it. But “come” and its variant forms is not a good one.
I want to know why people are still using this. (I most recently saw it in the pages of an Esquire magazine masquerading as something other than porn, badly, but I know I have seen it before and will see it again, more times than I could efficiently footnote).
It smacks of that same Puritanical urge that makes you ask the store clerk “do you have a washroom?” instead of “where is the bathroom?” You might as well say garderobe.
I find myself wanting scientific studies. I want control groups, I want gender and age brackets; I want to know if people who use the internet more frequently are more likely to default to the properly-differentiated cum instead of its mincing cousin. I want to know why people who are actively describing the moment of sexual climax feel the need to be fucking discreet about it. I want to know whether the OED has added “var. cumming” to its definition yet.
“I’m coming” is what I used to shout from the backyard when Mom called us in for suppertime. Its associations with the orgasmic moment are ominous at best. Think on that one for a while.
And what about the illiterate? If you don’t know how to spell, or even if you do know how to spell but you have never seen a dirty book or a naughty movie cover or a salacious banner ad, does it even cross your mind that using c-o-m-ing versus c-u-m-ming is a really weird thing to do, or is that purely a bedevilment of people who think too hard about words?
Vidi, vici, veni.
I suppose there are real, practical considerations here for the romance/erotica writers among us. For me it’s purely an abstract bedevilment, albeit one that rears its head at awkward moments. It is a difficult conclusion to come to.
Bloggers always say “leave a comment.” But I’m genuinely interested in knowing how you all spell cumming/coming, and whether you’ve ever thought about it before. And, for that matter, whether you always will think about it from here on out, damn my soul.
So leave a comment.
Actually, I prefer “coming” to “cumming” for the act and other words entirely for the by-product of the act. Interestingly, the erotica writers I hang out with generally feel the same, but not all erotica writers do. “Cumming” is, to me, a made up word that makes me cringe. English is a language filled with words that have a multitude of, often entirely dis-similar, meanings. As such, I have no difficulty with switching gears between “I’m coming” cried out in passion, and “I’m coming” said as a reply to someone calling your name.
I’m not desperately in love with the word “cumming,” I just find it less jarring than the “proper” spelling in sexy situations…most of the time I’d prefer something selected from the long list of other options, when it comes to it. We have so many choices for that particular moment…
I prefer ‘come’ too. It’s not a matter of Puritanism; more like aesthetics. ‘Cum’ is for porn, ‘come’ is for erotica and romance.
When it comes to “I’m coming,” I see no problem, like Bookewyrme, with the switch. There are plenty of words in the English language which are spelled the same, but have meanings which change dependent on context.
The word ‘cum’ sometimes appears in my books. I think. If you see it there, it’s not down to me. It’s an editorial change down to each publisher’s house style. I would NEVER write it, but if my editor makes that change, I just have to (and I apologise for saying this) suck it up.
Oh, don’t apologize — I sprinkled the whole thing liberally with dirty wordplay, mostly for my own amusement.
Still and all, though, we do say “cunt” these days, and say it cautiously, which is a far cry from Chauser’s casually-used and varyingly-spelled “queynte.” I think there is room for evolution in the English language, and that dirty words often end up at the forefront of that evolution.
Or perhaps I just read too much porn. I’m open to either explanation.
I prefer “cumming”, but that’s at least in part because I like the invention of new words, and I was also led to believe that was the correct spelling. I like it when English changes the spelling to indicate different meanings.
Incidentally, in Japanese they literally say the equivalent of “going” (verb “iku”) and conjugate accordingly.
I spent a pretty long time feeling pretty sure that “come” (in the sexual sense) was a verb and “cum” was a noun. I thought I’d changed my mind to “come” for everything, but now that I think about it I haven’t quite beaten that impulse completely out of myself and I still have a little more cum in me. Hmm.
Spanish has “correrse” (lit. “to run oneself”).
Sounds…messy. Which I suppose is appropriate.
I too, consider “cum” a noun, and hence “cumming” seems to me a bastardization of that noun. Am not much exposed to porn proper, mostly erotica.
xD xD “to run oneself”… I’m spanish, and that’s true, but I didn’t noticed the literal meaning until now.
By the way, here we say “me voy”(I’m coming) or “me corro” (I’m cumming). I guess it depends on each one…
I definitely agree with you on this and I have definitely pondered the same myself. But I’ve also wondered about the past tense, so here’s a new one to get your gears going.
Cum’d vs cummed. Which shall it be?
“Came” versus “cummed” would be the choice, to my mind, and that is a hard one (hur hur hur). I think most of the time I’ve seen it rendered “came,” e.g. “he came all over the front of his pants.”
Inconvenient word altogether, isn’t it?
“Cumming” just looks nastier than “coming.” I look at the word in general as a great word because I am a happily married man. Who cares how it’s spelled as long as your doing in within a happy+healthy marriage. UH oh. I just started a debate on that statement. HMMM.
Eh, substitute “relationship” (or even just “agreement”) for “marriage” and I don’t think anyone around here is likely to disagree. Mine tends to be a live-and-let-live sort of readership. Happy and healthy are good things, no matter what form they take — just like the word in question!
I’m disappointed that this post had nothing to do with Alan Cumming.
It’s cumming… A man does not ejaculate COME…just ask any expert, (porno star), we discharge sea men “Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of…well, you know.
It’s cum-