SPECIAL WORDS FOR SEX AND RELATIONSHIP 197 



is evidence to show an original sense of produce in the 

 root ma, and that the notions of mould, measure, and 

 plan really flow from this. 1 In other words, ma is to be 

 given much the same weight as mac in its relation to 

 gamahhida. As evidence of the notion of production 

 rather than that of planning in forms from md allied to 

 mother, I would cite the Russian use of matka for the 

 female of animals, and the use of the same word in the 

 Oberlausitz for queen - bee. Then we have in Greek 

 the short forms pala for midwife, nurse, or mother, 

 Heads for midwife, and ^aievo^at, for playing the mid- 

 wife. Majus, May may possibly be the producing, 

 fertilising, but can hardly be the thinking month. 

 Greek ^rpa, Latin matrix, and maczernica in the 

 Oberlausitz, stand for womb. Greek /mr/ouX??, for a 

 bawd, is probably for /jujTpvXr). In Sanskrit mdtrikci, is 

 womb, mother, and nurse. In O.H.G. moter is glossed 

 both vulva and matrix, while in M.H.G., as well as in 

 all Teutonic (including Scandinavian) dialects, muotor, 



1 If it be objected that we are again returning to the primitive sexual 

 instinct, it must be remarked that this seems anthropologically the correct 

 direction in which to turn, and that the manner in which some writers reduce sex- 

 words to asexual origins must be considered as unscientific. Thus sex-functions 

 were facts requiring names long before an abstract notion of pleasure probably 

 ultimately based on sexual gratification was formed. The concrete instance 

 first gives a name to the abstract, as when ' cakes and ale ' stand for festivity, 

 warmth and sunshine for gladness, and restful quiet for pleasure. As an in- 

 stance of the opposite method of procedure, we may cite the treatment of geil 

 in Grimm's Worterbuch, where it is asserted that the primitive notion of the 

 word was pleasure and the derived notion lust, while its use for parts of the male 

 or female organs of sex was only incidental. Yet we find in Old High German 

 such glosses as keili, petulantia carnis and geil, libidinosus; in A.S. gdl is glossed 

 libido and wifgal, libidinosus, while giella is used in O.H.G. for concubine, and in 

 a variety of long separated dialects the root is used to mark the complete male 

 animal, or its virility. That the root was used also for festive meals or gatherings 

 (as in the Old French gale}, wild peasant dances, and the licentious students who 

 attended such festivities (geilhart and golliard), is not to be wondered at if the 

 meal and dance of the old conventus ad generandum be borne in mind. 



