What in the World was a Clapper?

 



I teach a course in sociology of sexuality, and the etymologies of sexual phenomena are things I collect by habit. Let me share one with you! 

In Mediaeval Latin, a "clapus" or "claperius" was a pile of stones.

What might you do with a pile of stones in the Middle Ages? Well, if you put a few such piles in a stream, and then put stone slabs or wooden planks going from one pile to the other, you could construct what was called in English a "clapper bridge," like the one pictured here. Very picturesque!

If on the other hand you piled the stones loosely on the ground with plenty of spaces amidst them, you could make a place to house rabbits for food. In French, this was a "clapier." The association of rabbits with sexual frequency and enthusiasm led the term clapier to come to be used as a euphemism for a brothel. The Normans brought these usages to English shores, where they became, just as in the bridges, a "clapper," referring either a rabbit warren, or a sexual establishment run by a madam.

And this explains the origin of one of our most common English slang terms for a sexually transmitted disease (specifically gonorrhea): if one visited a clapper, one might come home with "the clap."

Now you know!

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