And then an adjective derived from "concubitus", concubitalis", is glossed as "copulative".
And I'm asking why "have sex" needs to be euphemised in the glosses for coire / coitus / commiscor / concumbo / concubitus, when it doesn't for concarnatio / commisco / concubitalis / conjugatio / etc. etc. etc.
Note that in certain religions, unmarried girls and guys aren't even allowed in a room alone with each other without a chaperone. Even today I hear lots of religious girls refuse to move in with someone until marriage. So living together even without any mention of sex is considered scandalous to certain people of certain times - thus requiring censoring in a 1919 treatise.
Heck, even in modern times, a block away from me, there's a mediation center where the guys and girls all have to sit on opposite sides of the building even though no one is having sex at a meditation center, and what the girls are allowed to wear is tightly restricted.
Because I am at least as familiar with Latin as the intended audience of the glossary. I detailed my objections in my root comment. Why don't I repeat them:
1. "Commisco" and "commiscor" are the active and passive forms of the same verb. This glossary has the active form meaning "copulate" and the passive meaning not "get screwed" but rather "cohabit". This is not a verb with different senses in the active and passive. (I'm assuming that the glossary's "commisco" is actually commisceo; for examples of verbs that _are_ different in their active and passive senses, see video, where the active means "see" and the passive commonly means "appear [to be a certain way]", or facio, where the passive fio is so special that it is morphologically not even passive.)
2. "Concumbo", "concubitus", and "concubitalis" are, respectively, a verb [literally "lie with"], a noun derived from that verb, and an adjective derived from the noun. This glossary gives the verb as "cohabitate", the noun as "cohabitation", and the adjective, somehow, as "copulative".
Here's the Lewis and Short dictionary entry for "concubitus": http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%... . I'll repeat it here:
> I. A lying together; reclining; a firm, close shutting together (of the teeth).
> II. Copulation, coition.
These are explicitly sexual words.
3. "Congressus" is glossed explicitly as "coition", immediately implying that the author and audience are both aware of the meaning of the word "coition". But "coire" and "coitus" are glossed as "to cohabit" and "cohabitation", despite the fact that these are not legitimate meanings of the Latin words. They refer to sexual intercourse. (Since they literally mean "go[ing] together", they have all kinds of other senses, such as entering into contracts. Cohabitation is not mentioned. See http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%... )
> The glossary has "to copulate" plenty of places, so if the author thought cohabitation only meant copulation, they'd just put "to copulate" wouldn't they?
Yes, this is very strange, as I said above. This is what I'm asking about.
> It doesn't, it says the cohabitation ones mean cohabitation. So that's living together, not just having sex together.
This conclusion cannot stand. The Latin words glossed as "cohabitation" do not generally have that meaning (concumbo does seem to offer it, though the primary sense is obviously just "have sex"), and the glossary frequently glosses different forms of the same word as "copulation" in one place and "cohabitation" in another place.
If it were really an explanation of how the English word is being translated into Latin, there would be no reason to use multiple inappropriate Latin words to substitute the same English word.
We should also note that the glossary appears in the "preface to the second edition"; in the first edition, you were apparently expected to read the text using your personal knowledge of Latin.
> And in all contexts cohabit specifically refers to the lifestyle of sharing a bed and regular sexual relations with someone who is not one's spouse
This is especially funny given that another word glossed as "cohabitation", conjugium, refers to marriage.
> We should also note that the glossary appears in the "preface to the second edition"; in the first edition, you were apparently expected to read the text using your personal knowledge of Latin
The background is the author of a 458 page tome adopting the common practice of substituting [sometimes extremely loose] Latin translations for perceived vulgarities in text, and the glossary being a second edition addendum to help the non-Latin reader decode unfamiliar words appearing at different points in the book rather than a systematic attempt to codify English vernacular into Latin. That's all in the first paragraph of TFA...
> This is especially funny given that another word glossed as "cohabitation", conjugium, refers to marriage.
Sure. To describe a non-marital sexual relationship (scandalous) as a marital one in euphemistic Latin (prude-friendly, mildly amusing to the Latin-speaking reader if it's in the context of an obviously unmarried relationship) in one or more passages of the book. Not because 'cohabitation' is a standard English euphemism for conjugal sexual activity, which it isn't and almost certainly never has been
1. This glossary glosses e.g. conjungo as "to copulate".
2. This glossary glosses coire as "to cohabit".
3. Coire does not mean "to cohabit"; it means "to copulate".
Thus, the question:
Why does "have sex" need to be euphemised in the gloss of coire, but not in the gloss of conjungo?
> But the glossary strongly implies that there's no meaning to "cohabitate" beyond "have sex"
It's common in discussions that people aren't answering your question.
I'm not saying "why doesn't the glossary note that 'cohabitation' means living together?". I'm saying "why is this glossary using 'cohabitation' to refer to having sex without any reference to living arrangements?".
Your comment doesn't respond to that at all; you appear to assume that 'cohabitation' does refer to living arrangements, and that this is obvious.
The word censorship is only in the title of the article.