Teabagging in the corpus

Teabag Wednesday in the USA really only had two good outcomes: first, we got to mock libertarian/republican rightwads for their cluelessness on sexual terminology, and two, they got to add a new item to their vocabulary, if not to their repertoire.

As a linguist, I tend to be pretty hip with the lingo, taking into account how hard it is to be hip over 40 when we’re talking about sexual acts no one actually does. (Be honest.) But Dan Savage’s latest article has thrown me into a spin — he asserts (and he should know) that teabagging is performed by the one with the teabags. That is, a male teabags a female and not the reverse, as I had always assumed.

To teabag someone, you need a scrotum with which to teabag them: The teabagger dips sack; a teabaggee receives dipped sack. It’s a little confusing, I realize, in that it’s the opposite of a blowjob: The person with a dick in his or her mouth is giving the blowjob; the person being sucked is receiving the blowjob. But language is funny that way.

I tend to side with Mr Savage, not only because of his expertise on all matters sexual, but also for his influence in bending language to his will. He did, after all, introduce us to ‘santorum‘, and while it hasn’t lasted, I give him props for getting it as far as he has. What I mean is that if teabagging meant what I thought it did before he wrote his column, it has a good chance of meaning what he thinks it does by right about now.

I can’t be the only one to have had this misapprehension, if my reading of ‘Overheard in New York‘ is representative.

Husband: Then I can teabag you.
Wife: Wait. They go in my mouth. Wouldn’t I be teabagging you?
Husband: My teabags, my act of teabagging.
Wife: That doesn’t sound right.
Husband: Whatever. Teabagging will occur.

So, to the Corpus. I took a somewhat selective view of the top Google hits for the term “I was teabagging” (minus ‘halo’ — don’t ask).

This page has it both ways:

[A commenter]”So the other night I was teabagging the hell out of this sexy ass bitch…”

[Another commenter] “I love teabagging- well, at least in the sense that I always understood it: putting a man’s balls in your mouth while giving head.”

This page has a bit of both as well:

“Because you kept telling me how much you liked my big balls when I was teabagging you, and I’d hate to think that you’d lie to me at such an intimate moment.”

“I’d just like to point out that, in the phrase, “I was teabagging you,” the teabagger is not the one dipping the bag, but the one receiving it.”

The Official Ninja Forum is fairly unambiguous:

Long story short, while I was teabagging Ashley my male member slithered out of the apartment…

A Wonkette commenter agrees with Savage:

“Personally I wouldn’t want to teabag any of those people. If they’ve come from the CPAC conference, then who knows where their faces have been.”

A little more research turned up this interview from director John Waters, who popularised the term in his film ‘Pecker’.

“Teabagging” is by my definition the act of dragging your testicles across your partner’s forehead. In the UK it is dipping your testicles in your partner’s mouth.

Regional variation, but both definitions put the action onto the one with the teabags.

And can we really argue with Urban Dictionary? Teabagging as an action-with-nuts is far and away the most upvoted.

That does it. I’m convinced. Now to contemplate the physical improbabilities of the act, barring cold water. YMMV.