by Naomi Darvell
(05/12/04)

from www.cleansheets.com

"La dildo, dildo la dildo, la dildo dildo de dildo."
Enter two Servants.
FIRST SERVANT
What has he got a-singing in his head now?
SECOND SERVANT
Now he's out of work he falls to making dildoes.

--Thomas Middleton, A Chaste Maid in Cheapside, 1613

I can't help it: the word "dildo" makes me laugh. It looks funny. What's the plural: "dildos" or "dildoes"? They both seem rather unlikely. "Dildo" sounds like a nonsense word -- and, come to find out, that's pretty much what it is. People will confidently tell you different origins of "dildo." It's from the Italian "diletto," they'll say, and it means "object of delight." Or they'll claim it comes from a Latin word meaning "open wide" -- something like dilato, presumably. That's bunk, I say. The guy in Middleton's play is treating the word like what it is: a musical chorus, like "dilly dilly" or "nonny nonny" -- only dirtier-sounding. ("Out of work," in this context, suggests that he's not gettin' any. His little song is, in a way, verbal masturbation.)

It appears, too, as if the word "dildo" sprang up around the Shakespearean age, that fertile cradle of all things smutty. Sure, penis-shaped devices for self-pleasuring or "therapy" are known everywhere and in all ages. But you first hear "dildo" from such writers as Middleton and Shakespeare himself. (Winter's Tale 4.4: "He hath songs for man or woman of all sizes; no milliner can so fit his customers with gloves. He has the prettiest love-songs for maids; so without bawdry, which is strange; with such delicate burdens of dildos and fadings...") Both the Middleton and the Shakespeare sound quite suggestive, "without bawdry" notwithstanding. But the first straight-up (so to speak) description of a dildo as a sex toy is courtesy of Thomas Nashe, in "The Choise of Valentines" (circa 1592):

Hence-forth no more will I implore thine ayde,
        Or thee, or men of cowardize upbrayde.
My little dildo shall supply their kinde:
        A knaue, that moues as light as leaues by winde;
That bendeth not, nor fouldeth anie deale,
        But stands as stiff, as he were made of steele,
And playes at peacock twixt my leggs right blythe,
        And doeth my tickling swage with manie a sighe;
For, by Saint Runnion he'le refresh me well,
        And neuer make my tender bellie swell.