One of the distinctive features of Old Norse poetry is the use of kenning: a circumlocutory device in which a straightforward noun is replaced with an allusive phrase.
For example, a ship might be referred to as a “wave’s horse”; a sword, a “wound-serpent”; a shield, “the shame of swords”, and so forth. Sometimes, kennings could be embedded in other kennings – thus, one might have “feeder of war-gulls” = “feeder of ravens” = “warrior”; this is known as a doubled or extended kenning.
Though many conventions of English literature can be traced back to Old Norse roots, kenning isn’t much encountered these days – at least, not in most genres. There’s one particular genre where the art of kenning is alive and well, though.
I’m speaking, of course, of erotic fanfic.
Whether you’re referring to a penis as a “porn-truncheon” or a vagina as “squish-pocket” (both examples I’ve seen employed in all apparent seriousness, incidentally), that perfectly fits the form and function of a kenning. Indeed, these examples even adhere to the idiosyncratic grammatical structure of many Old Norse kennings, with the base word being modified by an uninfected noun determinant inserted as a compound prefix.
Euphemisms for sex acts, meanwhile, can be even more baroque, forming multi-level allusions in the manner of doubled/extended kennings. “To ride the baloney pony”, for example, employs the act of riding a horse as an allusion to penetrative sexual intercourse – but the contained phrase “baloney pony” is, itself, a kenning of the simple type, with “pony” as the base word and “baloney” as the determinant, making the whole phrase a doubled kenning.
There are practical reasons for this sort of practice, of course; e.g., complex euphemisms can help sexually explicit works sneak through content filters. Still, it’s kind of fascinating that smutty fanfic has managed to preserve – in virtually unaltered state – a poetic form that’s otherwise been largely extinct in English literature for the better part of a thousand years.
mcu fandom: so clint barton is deaf and has a one-eyed dog named pizza dog and lives in an apartment in bed-stuy.
mcu: clint barton has a wife and three kids and lives on a farm in the countryside 🙂
mcu fandom: clint barton is deaf and has a one-eyed dog named pizza dog and lives in an apartment in bed-stuy. with his protege kate bishop. where they fight the tracksuit draculas
mcu: but–
mcu fandom: no.
Kira and Malia aren’t soulmates. They knew that when they started dating a few months ago, they knew that when they first met, and they knew that all through those first few weeks of awkward flirting in the bookstore where Kira works. It’s not something either of them let get in the way of their relationship, but things get more complicated when Allison Argent does a book signing at Beacon Books and all three of them are suddenly sporting matching soulmate tattoos.
kototyph 