Tuesday 23 May 2006

Sex with everything

What do the following have in common?
A revolutionary design for affordable houses, a cerise-coloured back-pack, the music of Chopin, a dual-fuel oven and THREE of the gardens at this year's Chelsea Flower Show.
The answer is that over the past week or two I have seen or heard all these things mentioned in the media with the adjective sexy attached.
The OED gives two meanings: a. Concerned with or engrossed in sex, and b. Sexually attractive or provocative, sexually exciting. But it adds also fig. (figurative), which I suppose suggests that it can be applied to virtually anything and has thus become a meaningless cliché.
It is now just an aid to lazy writers and commentators who are saying: “I use this sleek modern word in any context to suggest that I am rather sophisticated although actually I do so because I am too lazy to think of an appropriate adjective”.
It is interesting, in a dull sort of way, that the very first recorded use of the word in print was in 1925, in La Nouvelle Revue Française:
"Depuis que Joyce a publié un livre qu'ils croient ‘sexy’ cet état d'esprit n'a pas d'équivalent français on s'en empare..que sa méthode sert de modèle à des gens qui..se disent surréalistes.

3 comments:

Tony said...

Just a slip. Dinna fash yersel'.
Thank you for your apt addition to my rant.

ruth said...

I think it's called 'blog-whoring', putting 'sex' in the title is guaranteed to increase your stats. You've been rumbled.

Tony said...

I never meant it, miss, honest.
Of course, putting it in the text of posts also has the effect of increasing hits and comments (see here).
Twenty-seven of the 415 posts in OMF contain the word sex, though with no sinister motive. One can't get away from it, can one?