Date: Mon, 12 Jun 1995 19:30:57 -0600

From: Katherine Catmull kate[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]BGA.COM

Subject: Re: meddle



At 7:12 PM 6/12/95 -0400, Allan Metcalf wrote:



I don't have Partridge's _Shakespeare's Bawdy_, but it probably treats this.





He does. And he says



meddle with: To be intimate with (a woman): allusive in

_Twelfth Night_ III iv 252 and 283. --'How, sir? do you

make with my master?--_Coriolanus._ Ay, sir; 'tis an honester

service than to meddle with thy mistress'. _Coriolanus_ IV v

43-45

Via. Old Fr. _medler_, from the Low Latin equivalent

_miscere_, 'to mix':cf. compound and the

euphemistic modern mingle, v.i., 'to coit'



Of "medlar" he says that in Shakespeare it means "_either_ pudend or podex

or the pudend-podex area," which makes me laugh for some reason. I like the

scholarly italicized "either." Partridge has more to say on medlar, and I

refer the questioner to it--it's interesting.



Kate