Buggery
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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"Buggery (offensa cujus nominatio crimen est, as it is euphemistically designated in legal documents) was uniformly punished by putting to death both parties implicated, and usually by burning them alive. The beast, too, is punished and both are burned (punitur etiam pecus et umbo comhuruntur)y says Guillielmus Benedictinus, a writer on law, who lived about the end of the fourteenth century."--The Criminal Prosecution and Capital Punishment of Animals (1906) by E. P. Evans |
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The English term buggery is very close in meaning to the term sodomy, and is often used interchangeably in law and popular speech. It is also a specific criminal offence under the English common law.
Etymology
The word bugger and buggery are still commonly used in modern English as a mild exclamation, and "buggery" is also synonymous with anal sex.
The word "bugger" was derived, via the French "bougre", from "Bulgar", that is, "Bulgarian", meaning the medieval Bulgarian heretical sect of the Bogomils, which spread into Western Europe and was claimed by the established church to be devoted to the practice of sodomy. "Buggery" first appears in English in 1330, though "bugger" in a sexual sense is not recorded until 1555.
See also
