When someone rejects an ask, two people now know the truth: One person wants sex, the other does not. Pinker says even if the innuendo is obvious, we still feel more comfortable with hiding the meaning than with a "direct overture," or an out-and-out ask for sex. "here is something that is more comfortable about asking to see etchings than asking for sex," Pinker says in his lecture. "If you could get someone in a private room, you can get someone in bed, and you've already established that that's what you want to do and that that's what you're going to do!" "The whole idea of 'come up and see my etchings' is the idea of private space, and that's what 'Netflix and chill' is all about," Sherman said. Sherman hypothesized that both the "Netflix and chill" and "come upstairs and see my etchings" strategies require the use of such personal space. "That's to say that there are walls and a door, but basically where we have separate rooms, they had huge public shared rooms." "Kings and queens often had public levees where they would wake up in the morning and courtiers would attend to them in the room," Sherman said. Back then, even royalty had public rooms. Here's the thing about private space: It was a rarity before the 18th century. ![]() "All of the seduction happens on the public streets," Sherman said. And, according to Sherman, during and before the Restoration era, most people did not have access to any private space at all. In fact, he said that while Shakespeare and Restoration comedy abounded in sexual innuendo, almost none of it was in private. There's also another element at play in the "would you like to come up and see my etchings?" phenomenon: It requires that the asker have a removed space for their suitor to visit. "And in-jokes of all kinds abounded people would watch each other for their reactions to innuendo." Indeed, it's not a stretch to say the uproarious appreciation of innuendo in Shakespeare's time is today's retweet. "Remember that was evenly lit, and in a horseshoe shape everyone could see everyone," Sherman said. Which makes some sense, when you think about it: Just as Twitter is one of the great social media platforms of our time, allowing phrases like "Netflix and chill" to take root and thrive, so too was the theater a social medium during the Elizabethan era, where audience members regularly congregated to meet friends, show off their outfits, gossip and flirt. Shakespeare in particular "pack his plays" with sexual innuendos, much to the delight of his audience, who reveled in his bawdier jokes.Įventually, Sherman said, innuendo made the leap from the stage to the streets, becoming part of contemporary Elizabethan conversation. In a correspondence between a female character and a male suitor, the woman invites the man to view some etchings. "I have a new collection of etchings that I want to show you," she wrote.Ī brief history of innuendo: The need to rely on innuendo and coded language to make our intentions known stems further back than "want to come up and see my etchings?" It at least goes as far back as the Shakespearean era, according to Stuart Sherman, a scholar of Shakespeare and Restoration theater and professor of English at Fordham University.Īccording to Sherman, much of the innuendos and double entendres we use today have roots in theater. One of the earliest known uses of "come up and see my etchings" that Mic found is from Horatio Alger Jr.'s 1890 book The Erie Train Boy, which is partially available on Google Books. Beginning in the 1860s, there was a great " etching revival," which appears to have sparked the birth of the "want to come up and see my etchings?" invitation. It has been a popular form of art since the 16th century. ![]() It's also been referenced in numerous articles, such as this New York magazine piece whose headline pays homage to the phrase.įor the uninitiated, etching is a form of art in which a person covers a piece of metal with a top layer of wax and "etches" away at the wax to reveal a picture in the metal underneath. While rarely used today, the phrase "Want to come up and see my etchings?" has been the subject of linguistic inquiry for years.
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