AS A YOUNG GRADUATE I dated a man who loved Chaucer more than he loved me. I suppose in retrospect one reason for pursuing such a person was the expectation that he would woo me with beautiful language and I would experience raptures heretofore unknown. It was not to be.

Much as he admired the written word, the gentleman was far too careful a scholar to chance embarrassing himself in an unguarded moment of passion. Often, he said nothing at all. Still the cunning linguist did manage to thrill occasionally: his term of endearment for me, the word that gave me chills whenever he breathed it into my ear, was the familiar anatomical term that rhymes with hunt.

The C-word is so old that it has no clear origin in etymology. Many Indo-European languages have similar terms but their origin, it would seem, is unknowable.

Language is as multilayered as all other sensual experiences — both as entertainment and necessity. Enjoyment of it can be sophisticated or naive, and its mysteries are available to anyone. Such complexity is commonly assumed to be unique to — and universal among — human beings.

And as with other pleasures such as food and sex, I think we all can agree that sometimes one must bypass the Michelin-starred, elaborate stylings of the world’s great masters for quick and dirty satisfaction outside the chip shop. Hence, the persistence of dirty words.

Sampling Mark Morton’s tasting menu of these is something akin to planning a romantic meal at a well-regarded restaurant. Absolutely correct and without fault, beautifully prepared and presented — and, alas, denuded of the diacritics beloved of geeky academics, while somehow missing the base titillation of the truly dirty. There is nothing quite like reading the C-word in italics to rob it of its transgressive power.

The book is a neat little object one need not feel ashamed of owning. Each thematic chapter, one for boys’ bits, one for girls’ and so on, is studded with quotes, definitions and similar garnishes. The visual effect is rather like reading a magazine extended to book length. A nice magazine, of course, something thoughtful like The New Yorker. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. However, treating a top-shelf subject with such middle-class decorum . . . well, it’s all a bit tasteful, isn’t it? Morton’s research is impressive, though sometimes thorough to the point of masturbatory — a ten-page catalogue of euphemisms for the penis struck me as unnecessary. But he is also breathlessly confessional, warm and well intentioned. The reader can hardly fail to be delighted on learning something new, such as discovering that the epithet “poontang” (vagina) is thought to be derived from putain (French for prostitute).

This is a book meant to be taken in parts, not all at once. Not because, I think, there is a danger of becoming bored with the words through overexposure but because such level-headed examination of words we say out loud only to our closest companions (or complete strangers) may produce an effect rather like too much rhubarb after a rich meal.

Probably every academically minded girl has at some point fallen for a professor. The strongly erotic memory of a beloved teacher persists well beyond when it should. At inopportune times reading this book, I found myself remembering the fat, freckled ankle of a certain sexagenarian, revealed as he stretched to retrieve a book. Or thoughts of a female socio-linguist, prim and grey-cardiganed, whose Spanish was littered with the filthy consonants of rural Mexico.

Competence is ever so sexy, and a talent for agile wordplay almost irresistible. Morton has this ability, seeming to promise that the reader is only a few pages from language’s, and sex’s, inner circle.

The wise co-ed soon realises, however, that to her devoted instructor there is no phenomenon that will ever go unexamined, no element too small not to be crushed under the weight of examining its constituent parts. What language seems so desperately to need — and filthy language especially — is some variant on Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, or else the C-word may lose its power to either thrill or offend. Language is the closest thing we have to magic in everyday life and the mystery of bedroom words is something I’d sooner see kept.

Nevertheless, I would love to go to a Morton lecture. Living in eternal hope that possession of wordsmithery indicates a true Casanova, I suspect he is very crushworthy.

DIRTY WORDS: The Story of Sex Talk
by Mark Morton
Atlantic, £12.99; 272pp
£11.69 (free p&p)
0870 1608080

www.timesonline.co.uk/booksfirst

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