This is the allusionist in which I, Helen Zoltzman, say to language,

Whoa, hey, slow down!

Err, I think we might be better off just staying friends.

Recent episodes were about people getting together.

This episode is about people splitting up.

It's not particularly saucy, but there are adult themes and a couple of category B swear words.

Let's prepare ourselves with a little word history.

Here's the etymology of fornication, a term for sex which has always carried a suggestion of

immorality. It arrived in English from French by the 14th century but came from the Latin

fornix, which referred to brothels. Brothel, by the way, comes from the old English word for degenerate

or decay, but fornix, origenument, and arch, or a vaulted chamber. So why that connection?

It's thought that the ancient Roman sex workers may have stood in archies waiting for trade,

while fornic's gained a sexual connotation, skulled doggery, originally a synonym for fornication,

has lost its, and now it's just a term for underhand behaviour.

Other fun all terms for fornication include jolly and abandoned, but in the Old Testament,

fornication also meant idolatry, cheating on God with other objects of worship.

Furthermore, idolatry appears as one of the definitions of adultery.

Again, there's that sense of spiritual infidelity.

Surprisingly, adultery is not related to the word adult, which is from the Latin for grown,

but it shares origins with adulterate from the Latin for mixed, because adulterers had

adulterated the marriage by mixing themselves sexually with someone other than the person to whom

they were married. In the Macleen and Versus Macleen and Divorce case in 1958, proof of adultery

...