How the codpiece flopped | Hacker News Reader

How the codpiece flopped

bbc.com

138 pointsrntn63 comments

Interesting titbit in the last paragraph: apparently in the Wolf Hall series based on Hillary Mantel's trilogy, the codpieces in the show weren't as big as they ought to have been given historical evidence.

That, at least, Blackadder got right:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5A55eWbiBI

Maybe a tad more modest (season 2 might have gotten it exactly right, although the codpiece seems to have been getting less popular by then during the reign of Elizabeth I).

There's also Season 2 of Wolf Hall itself, filming sometime soon. Maybe they'll get the codpieces right this time, but it will be an awesome series regardless.

And, talking of comedies, over-sized in Upstart Crow. (The play at least, I can't recall if there was the same joke in the TV series - certainly not recurring in their regular costume.)

It was meant to but it was snubbed by the beeb as inappropriate. Mitchell was very annoyed about this, mentioned it on his blog somewhere (or was it his wife?)

Why "flop"?

It was a fashion trend that lasted for more than 100 years! Sure, fashion moved a lot slower in medieval times, making 100 years somewhat short-lived for the time. But even so, including the less ostentatious non-padded versions, the codpiece in general was a practical piece of clothing and truly ubiquitous at it's peak.

In some ways it was way more successful than any modern fashion trend could ever hope to be...

It did flop

...Around

The author definitely had their reasons for picking "How the codpiece flopped" instead of "How the codpiece went out of fashion"

Also, judging from the URL, they must've been pretty happy to find the joke because the title used to be "what happened to the codpiece"

>In some ways it was way more successful than any modern fashion trend could ever hope to be...

The business suit?

They're joking about a floppy body part

They omitted the attempt by OG Black Panther Eldridge Cleaver to revive the codpiece:

https://www.thecrimson.com/article/1975/9/26/eldridge-cleave...

With image: https://madamenoire.com/1307231/eldridge-cleaver-invented-pe...

To be fair, these look comfortable.

> “I've seen writers invent plenty of ways of keeping from writing, but these pants are a disaster for Cleaver."

Beautiful

I wonder how long the "pair of" phrasing can stick to things that were once a pair of items and got redesigned to be one thing, like trousers, or scissors (originally a pair of knives). My wife always says "scissor" singular, which I thought was weird but now think is the just way the language will go eventually.

How long can we stick with "hang up the phone" and "off the hook" now there is no separate handset and no hook or base? And finaly, why is it "a pair of underpants" when that could never have been two garments?

Singular "pant" has recently-ish become accepted fashion industry jargon: "Our spring collection includes a khaki pant and a capri pant". I've started to see it creep from there into everyday language.

This might stem from noncount noun rules rather than any particular trend for the word "pants".

Typical example is the word _water_. It is noncount except when talking about types of water. E.g., this year we introduced a vitamin water and an energy water to our line of beverages. By extension, you can pluralize it: we introduced two new waters this year.

I don't disagree that pants might be slowly becoming countable, just noting that the particular verbiage of "a capri pant" or whatever can be produced using the usual rules.

In Spanish, pyjamas is 'pijama', my saying it in plural always gets a laugh.

I'm still 'taping' shows when I DVR and nobody can tell me otherwise

Hi from E17!

There are dozens of us!

I'm a millennial and I didn't even know "off the hook" originated from phones.

Yeah I’m skeptical, a meat hook makes a lot more sense than a telephone hook.

https://thewordcounter.com/off-the-hook/

You don't have a separate left underpant and right underpant?? Wouldn't a one piece get bunched up between your penises?

Fun fact! The correct original plural is “penes”.

I mean, we say a pair of pants, and underpants also refer to the long version.

> very word "codpiece" comes from the Old English "cod", meaning "scrotum"

Wait, how did that transfer to the fish?

According to [0] it’s not the same origin. Phew!

0: https://www.etymonline.com/word/cod

  braguette

New word for the day.

haha, took me a moment to fully appreciate this fine word.

to be fair, in French nowadays it's still used to mean a pant's fly

Is there a connection to baguette, which could be seen as phallic in shape?

According to the wiktionary, the etymologies are different (braguette coming from braie, which is an old word for pants, mostly associated with Gauls, whereas baguette comes from the Italian bacchetta, wich means rod)

I can imagine a season of Curb Your Enthusiasm with Larry David spending the season trying to bring the codpiece back into fashion, after another embarrassing pants tent episode like in the very first season! Would be an awesome signoff for his final season.

You will never convince me that peascod is not a facetious verlan-style reference to codpiece. Pease-cod vs. cod-pease. Come on!

> the Colleoni coat of arms – and on it, are three comma-like shapes. These are testicles, thought to have been included as a display of macho strength, and because of the similarity of the family name to the word for them, coglioni.

Looks like Tres Commas isn't just a Silicon Valley invention!

Also, "braguette" is my new favorite word.

> Looks like Tres Commas isn't just a Silicon Valley invention!

Fun fact: Tres Commas Tequila is still sold and is actually quite good.

the Colleoni coat of arms

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colleoni#/media/File%3AArms_...

No mention of Cameo.

(applauds)

That's also my go-to karaoke song (no codpiece unfortunately)

I hear he's got a weird thing to show us

Word up

Word Up video (with Levar Burton!): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZjAantupsA

Whatever you think about Shadiversity (he’s made some pretty controversial and offensive statements as of late), his old video covering the controversy surrounding “boob armor” in the Mandalorian is amazing. That was where I first learned what a codpiece was for. The main point of critics was that “The design of armor in the show is overtly sexual and objectifies women,” and Shad’s argument was “Decorative armor was always meant to sexualize the wearer, including men, and what the Mandalorian did wasn’t particularly egregious.”

Nothing like a history nerd making several hours of footage that can basically be summarized as “You’re wrong!”

> Shadiversity (he’s made some pretty controversial and offensive statements as of late)

Do you have examples?

I've never heard of this guy and I do like well made Youtube history videos so I looked it up.

I did find a reddit thread. I think this comment sums up the sentiment there (although I haven't seen his specific words):

https://old.reddit.com/r/Shadiversity/comments/10sbcts/tldr_...

> Personally: his prejudices against gay people and his tendency to jump to the conclusion that something is "woke" simply because it mentions a subject left-leaning people are concerned about.

> (See the "knights watch" reviews of the new The Last of Us series for examples.)

> I (a bisexual man) always found his material on historical practices and weapons, as well as his fantasy theory videos to be extremely entertaining and convincing.

> But his views when it comes to pop culture are often his prejudice worded in a way that deflects criticism.

> Comparing gay representation in the last of us, as if it was a foot fetish and having someone suck and/or lick toes in media. (see episode 3 of knights watch the last of us review)

> I'm not going to claim hes homophobic 'because' he's mormon christian conservative. But he is homophobic, and a mormon christian conservatve.

You can easily Google it.

They seem to be alive and well in NFL uniforms.

Football players typically don’t wear cups.

https://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/09/sports/football/helmet-ch...

They’re wearing jockstraps, which have the affect of a codpiece even when the player eschews the additional protection of the hard insert (aka “cup”).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jockstrap

Well then their pants seem to bunch everything up and thrust it forward.

In cricket even women wear them!

Why?

Same reason. I'm not an expert but I don't think taking an 80mph cricket ball on the lips is much fun either.

Because getting kicked in the pubic bone hurts women too.

/r/ItHurtsGirlsToo

/r/OuchMyFlaps

Ctrl-F Koteka in the BBC article was disapointing, the Beebs cultutal blinkers were on.

https://www.google.com/search?q=Koteka&tbm=isch

IIRC some choose to have a codpiece fitted to their wetsuits. Whether it serves a functional or cosmetic purpose is up for debate.

Missing it. The modern pants aren’t that accommodating for the right blood flow and temperature, especially when sitting for prolonged time. Giving the established effect of the temperature on the sperm quality and count, I'd venture a guess that it may be among the reasons for the global sperm count decline which seems to parallel with the office jobs (sitting) proliferation and the decrease of the blue collar (standing/walking) jobs.

Counterargument is that the global sperm count decline is global.

As in not limited to humans. It is seen in many mammals.

Even the evidence for humans is a bit patchy - a third of studies come to the opposite conclusion, and plenty of those that agree have massive methodological flaws. So I doubt we can say that with any real confidence for other mammals.

https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/declining-sperm-count-much-...

Just want to highlight that you put a blog named "Astral Codex Ten" claiming patchiness and methodological flaws because "data are very noisy" against the peer-reviewed journals like Oxford Scientific which for example states:

"This comprehensive meta-regression analysis reports a significant decline in sperm counts (as measured by SC and TSC) between 1973 and 2011, driven by a 50–60% decline among men unselected by fertility from North America, Europe, Australia and New Zealand. "

If the "data are very noisy" argument were a sound argument it would have dismissed most of the science that we have today.

I'm not putting anything against anything. That paper [0] completely agrees with the blog - they threw out all but 38 of the 2936 studies they considered, for crying out loud - and neither makes any call on sperm count in animals other than humans.

[0] https://academic.oup.com/humupd/article/29/2/157/6824414

Do you have a source for the claim that sperm count for many mammals has been declining?

I was only able to find "Sperm counts in semen of farm animals 1932-1995" https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9401823/

Which states that farm animal sperm count has unchanged or has increased over time.

Someone should do a research study to determine if wearing skirts is better for men with office jobs.

Nice title!

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