"Words of Love"

While at the library yesterday, I was browsing the shelves and came upon a book, “Making Whoopee: Words of Love for Lovers of Words” by Evan Morris. Naturally intrigued, I pulled it off the shelf to find it was trivia book of sorts. It was a list of words, related to love and sex, complete with how they originated, and their meanings past and present.

I flipped through the pages to see if “libertine” was included. It was:

“Today we use libertine to mean ‘a person who blatantly flouts society’s generally accepted rules of moral conduct, especially regarding sexual behavior.’ Hugh Hefner, the publisher of Playboy, was for many decades regarded as America’s leading libertine, a title now made irrelevant by any weekday’s crop of guests on The Jerry Springer Show and its kind.

But while “libertine” might be out of a job at the moment, the history of the word is an interesting historical tour of what our society has regarded, at various times, as being ‘free’ (and sometimes, ‘too free’). When “libertine” first appeared in English, about 1382, derived from the Latin “libertus” (meaning ‘freed’), it was applied in historical accounts to Roman slaves who had been freed from bondage. By the sixteenth century, a “libertine” was a freethinker in matters of religion, and the term held much the same weight of condemnation as apostate or infidel. By the seventeenth century, “libertine” had been secularized and was used to describe anyone who disregarded the conventions of art, literature, or society in general. Then, as simple social nonconformity lost its shock value, “libertine” took on the more restricted sense of a ‘sexually promiscuous, dissolute person who is willing to break any social taboo in pursuit of his or her pleasure’.”

First of all, I had to laugh at the notion of Hugh Hefner being “America’s leading libertine”. I never thought of this country having its own “Libertine Laureate”, so to speak.

Secondly, I chose the word “libertine” to describe my lifestyle mainly because it’s an old word with a long history. “Libertine” has a lot more class and panache than its more current synonyms: horndog, stud, womanizer, ladies’ man, etc. And though I see the word only occasionally in print; I wouldn’t quite say that it’s totally “out of a job”. Indeed, I hope that I will have played some small part in helping the word regain some of its former popular usage.

I certainly associate being a libertine with being free; free of the bondage of monogamy! Also, I think I can safely say that many would consider me an “infidel” when it comes to religion, so some of the previous meanings of the word still hold true in a sense in my case. And while the current meaning is accurate for me, I can’t quite say that I’m willing to break any social taboo in pursuit of pleasure. Though I break most of them quite cheerfully, even a libertine has some limits.

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Check out “Making Whoopee” at: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1565123506/qid=1100218454/sr=2-1/ref=pd_ka_b_2_1/002-3474027-7228864