ABSTRACT
Lexicographers, and grammarians too, often have sex as well as gender on their minds, sometimes getting the thing wrong on their index cards, occasionally conceding and correcting an embarrassing error. The great Henry Fowler of the Oxford Dictionary assumed, as he said, “a cheerful attitude of infallibility”; but when he missed out on the sexuality of “Adultery” the faulty definition was amended. Fowler had defined it thus: “Voluntary sexual intercourse of married person with one of opposite sex.” Colleagues pointed out with a certain amount of glee (such is the nature of male jealousy) that he did not appear to be excluding from “adultery” the sexual intercourse of married couples, husband and wife.* Sex is much too important to be left to men who make only dictionaries.
