So, way, WAYYYYYY back when, in my barely-into-teen-nerdy days, I had a bit of cash to spend.

And my birthday was coming up, so I started a new tradition.

Buying myself a birthday present each year.

That year, it was the Oxford English Dictionary.

And, at 14, with friends mostly in the 15-17 year range, what do you think we would want to do with the world’s most complete English language dictionary (as I understood it at that time)?

Look up the dirty words, of course!

ALL of them. And eventually, we got to nookie, which someone mentioned, and the rest of us were unaware of.

And there it was:

SEX! YASSSSS! Another word to use, and one we really hadn’t heard much, so we were very self-congratulatory.

And wait. What’s that?

It ALSO means a woman you’d like to nookie with? someone mentioned in a ribald way that I was a woman (girl) they’d like to have nookie with, and it stuck.

It was that simple.

And then, it wasn’t.

Because in the way of language everywhere, usage and meaning shift.

(For those interested in how this happens and the camps of prescriptivist and descriptivists, you may want to check out this article.)

And LimpBizkit did his thing, which was suitably ambivalent, and now the meaning—which was once a bit campy and silly and fun, like horizontal bop or four-legged-frolic, has shifted to being a bit dirtier, and for many people, all the way to referring to genitalia, rather than the act itself.

Heck, even on Urban Dictionary, it means:

• Vagina
• Naked cuddle
• Sex
• Intercourse

And yadda, yadda.

But, like my vagina, my naked cuddles, my sex and my intercourse, I’m pretty attached to my Nookie (also spelled nooky in the OED), and I’ll keep it.

Besides, if someone learns my name, and they do this:

They have just self-deselected. Saves time for everyone involved.

smiles

NOTE: One of my mottos is, “Words have meaning.” In many ways, I would identify best as prescriptivist, in that I use the dictionary definitions of words to choose the words I want to use (especially in writing), rather than their slang meanings.

However, I also believe in learning others’ meanings, and understanding them, because of descriptivism, and because i believe in wanting to understand others as much as possible.

I also believe that the shift of words as it applies to people and identities is a critically important trend to follow, as I care about what people want to be called, whether it’s queer, AMAB, or vagina.