Colloquial French

[poliphilo]

According to Edmund de Waal,  smart young Parisians in the late 19th century referred to bisexuals as being "entre deux lits"- between two beds. I wonder if the phrase is still current. 

Comments

[ooxc.livejournal.com]

Pointless piece of information - I lived in the same house in Oxford as his brother

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Small world. :)

[raakone.livejournal.com]

Interesting term there. And one that wasn't appropriated from anywhere else.....as opposed to a certain English term. At one time AC/DC referred to appliances that worked on either voltage type, especially in Australia (it was those letters on a hairdryer that gave that rock band its name), but this became irrelevant with AC becoming the norm, except for a few small holdouts (as late as the 90's, in Boston, USA, there were some buildings that used DC for domestic power, and many a university student wrecked their laptops and lamps by plugging them in), and in the UK it referred to trains that could run on either type (now they usually say "Dual-Voltage"), so AC/DC just means.....between two beds, in the de Waal sense.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Interesting.

I wonder if the term- as applied to bisexuals- will survive the disappearance of the technology it refers to.