Jill emailed me asking for some Bitchery assistance. She needs some additional terms for “Bad Sex Bingo.” (I think I actually heard many of you sit up straight in your chairs!)
I’m co-teaching a workshop on how to write a sex scene. To illustrate the importance of proper vocabulary, I’m thinking of having the group play Bad Sex Bingo, an idea inspired by your Romance Novels Workouts.
I’m looking for the wince-inducing doozies–cliches, words that may be correct but just sound awful (such as turgid), sexist concepts (such as “one concession to femininity”), etc.
Here is Jill’s list so far – oh, sweet memories. I’ve read maaaaaany of these. Repeatedly. Oh, romance, please don’t ever change your turgid, sexy ways.
- Aching bulge
- Anything + “of love”
- Breasts like apples
- Breasts like cantaloupes
- Breasts like grapefruit
- Bud
- Button
- Dingle + anything else
- Distended
- Engorged flesh
- Family jewels
- Heaving loins
- Hilt
- Laved
- Length
- Love grotto
- Love sausage
- Lush folds
- Maidenhead
- Man-root
- Member
- Neglected nipples
- Nipples like cherries
- Nipples like pearls
- Nubbin
- One concession to femininity
- One-eyed
- Pendant
- Pert
- Phallus
- Pouting nipples
- Pulsating
- Purple
- Ram
- Ripe fruit
- Rod
- Ruched nipples
- Salami
- Shaft
- Silken grip
- Silken steel
- Snake
- Spear
- Straining masculinity
- Sword
- Tender sheath
- Throbbing manhood
- Tumescent
- Turgid
- Vagina like flowers
- Va-Jay-Jay
- Velvet purse
- Velvet steel
- Womanhood
- Wrinkled
I know you can think of many, many, maaaany silly, strange, odd, or perhaps excellent euphemisms used in sex scenes, or descriptions that made you tilt your head and frown. Please share in the comments if you’d like!
To make this even more fun, I have a set of Cards Against Romance Tropes, the Cards Against Humanity-esque game created by the Chicago North chapter of RWA for their Spring Fling in 2014. I will select a winner from the comments at random to win their own set of Cards Against Romance Tropes (CART).
Standard yadda-yadda applies: Void where prohibited. Open to international residents where permitted by applicable law. Must be over 18 and prepared to say the word “turgid.” We’ll sell you the whole seat, but you’ll only need the edge. I’ll select a winner at random from the comments on Friday 1 May 2015 and announce the winner same day.
So, bring it on: your turgid, your winsome, your throbbing members yearning to break free! We await your favorite, most goofy, wtf-y, and enjoyable sex scene terms!
Time to announce the winner! The winner of a set of CART – Cards Against Romance Tropes – is Christine! Congrats and enjoy – and thank you all for a very funny discussion!
Honey.
In reference to taste.
Of anything.
Ever.
And can I just say, I am way, way more comfortable with clinical terms then euphemisms. I don’t feel that it makes it seem clinical, or somehow less sexy, to refer to a person’s body parts by their proper names. I think it seems really immature to not be able to identify them.
Oh yeah, and on that note, Pink Bumpy Bits.
Than!
I am so ashamed.
although, I suppose if you got the clinical terms out of the way first – then – used some euphemisms, I would probably be okay with that.
Oh, I used to keep a list of the terms that irritated me, but I added a new one to the list not long ago: Man-part. Thanks (NOT)!, Sandra Hill, for killing that term for me forever. It was used so often that I actually got sick of seeing it in “The Viking Takes a Knight”.
Other ones that got high “Ugh!” marks on my list “weeping”, “Love Candle”, “His Jade Pagoda” (it’s supposed to be *her* Jade Pagoda and *his* Jade Stalk, but I don’t think the writer realized that… All I kept wondering was “does it have bells on the corners?”), “Slit” or “Slot” when applied to lady parts, and “Man-meat”. (Cringe)
Ivory Column
Portal of Venus
Nectar of Love
My all-time favourite has nothing to do with sex, but it gives me the giggles every time I think of it:
“His noble head was a perfect globe.”
She explored the plains of his ripped abdomen. (Looking for (hot) spots?)
geoporn.
gah.
His “manhood”.
I don’t think a penis is the sole arbiter of what makes someone male, even in a romance novel.
Molten Core or either term standing (turgidly) alone.
Painful
Seeping
Weeping
Gushing
Tasting of strawberries and/or champagne… pearl of femininity… _________ (adjective) globes, in reference to either breasts or butt… and my personal least favorite- nest of curls. It makes me envision a bird flying out of her weeping sheath.
Any part other than eyeballs that are “weeping”. Ick.
Gushing warmth
Man gravy
Flooded sheath
Love Petals
Just no to all of these.
Quivering, whimpering, and cream. Eww.
Sweet pocket
(This wasn’t from a romance, but it still counts as a WTF euphemism.)
@Lisa:
Your comment made me realize that I’ve read “moist” or “dewy petals” more than once. Egads.
“Age old rhythm”, like no sh*t, seriously I don’t know why, but that phrase in any connotation just completely takes me out of the scene.
Commanding length. .. cuz I don’t take orders from no length
Sugared sheath.
Honeyed love passage.
Bit o’manliness
Love cave.
Testicles : “the storehouses of the nectars of love”.
Slightly less flowery : “the meat of his confession” and “that which made him man”.
Spongy Tool, Moist Folds, Pussy Juice, Quim
Just read this weekend. And totally took me out of my previous enjoyment of the story:
“delicious cucumbery cock”
I am not making this up. Otherwise great book. But that line. I just died.
Grasping or fluttering ladybits, anyone “slanting” their mouths together (read a book that had that, no lie, about six times in one makeout scene and I nearly screamed), vagina being referred to as “petals”, “cream” (Sylvia Day used to do this. A. LOT.), anyone plumping breasts…
Nothing should ever be moist. Ever.
lust “pooling low” in the belly abdomen, gut, core–All I can think of is freakin’ Niagara or Hoover Dam exploding.
“lips”–but not on her mouth
“plum”–but not in his fruit bowl
“silk” or “silken” for anything wet
“pebbled” nipples–like you can’t be bothered to get your driveway paved?
“tangled” or “tangling” tongues–yeah, if I was a snake or a frog maybe
Sorry, just two more and then I’ll stop.
Grasping sheath
Suckling place of love
Loins. Heavy loins, throbbing loins… I ran across “thundering loins” awhile back.
Body like an Adonis/Greek Statue/God/Goddess/Aphrodite
“Juices”–pretty much any word with a “u” in it is asking for trouble
“smells like blank, blank, and man/male”–blank 1=spice, blank 2=something in the environment, e.g. “he smelled like cinnamon, horses and male” or “he smelled like mint, tobacco, and–you guessed it–male!” Sometimes embellished by indefinably. Female equivalent is equally annoying,
“silken sheath”–see previous comment
“fullness” “stuffed” “burning”–see juices above
It’s too early to remember specific phrases from love scenes but one of the things that always irritates me is the heroine looking in the mirror and finding her pert breasts too small or her rosy lips too pouty, even though we are supposed to know she is really hot. I also have trouble with sapphire eyes or emerald eyes or – well, too much Katherine Stone in the 90’s there, I guess.
Womanly passage. Sounds like a place with pegs to hang one’s knitting, gardening gloves etc.
(And all of the above)
Have never seen the term va-jay-jay used in a sex scene, but it would make the book the book into an instant DNF
Lady Land
any part of the female body bursting into flames
sculpted, chiseled, piercing, for any parts of the male anatomy
And any mention of ovaries immediately takes me out of an otherwise well-written sex scene.
Please no more “flat male/masculine nipples”. Pretty sure readers can gather from context whose nips are being referred to, and I’ve encountered plenty of male nipples that aren’t completely flat, so…it’s just on a level of mouths “slanting” together to mean kissing, as far as I’m concerned. Whyyyy.
I normally love Lisa Kleypas, but a sex scene in one of her books involved a description of “tender love pleats” that really stood out to me in a WTF way, although after reading the above comments I’m wondering if it was a typo for “petals”?
As a romance writer, I must confess to having used at least one (okay, maybe more than one) of these. The post and comments are totally cracking me up, and I have to say every time one of you mentions “gushing,” all I can think is that the poor character should probably get medical help for that problem.
Sopping. Unless they’re having next times in a rainstorm I don’t want anything to be sopping.
Ugh. On my phone, apologies. That should be “smexy” times, not next.
I read “mound of Venus” in a contemporary recently and it took me right out of the book. Who in 2015 says that?
My personal faves from days of yore, when Old Skool was new, were the phrases that made my young self re-read passages in confusion or consult a dictionary. For example, anything flaming (like his sword which, of course, needed a sheath) or his tumescence.
Lately, penis descriptions seem to be getting too much for me. Mushroom head? Lots of about veins showing? No thank you. I almost, but not quite, would prefer manroot.
“Stuffed.”
I kid you not, kicked me straight out of the book.
Since butt sex is now so prominent and I’ve been reading a lot of mm romance, I propose the following:
puckered or puckering
winking
rosebud
darkest place
forbidden entrance
darkest passage
Also:
all uses of the word orbs
And reading pouting (lips, nipples) in a love scene is yuck.
Laughing my ass off!!
“quivering” or anything “swollen”.
I believe this is the single most overused word in sex scenes:
IMPOSSIBLY (longer, harder, deeper)
The most cringe inducing word in sex scenes:
SLURP