The position involves different- or same-sex partners going down on each other-genitals or anus-at the same time, usually achieved by lying on their sides or one on top. The term is found in a 1790 French work, The Whore’s Catechisms, attributed the revolutionary figure Théroigne de Méricour, who described a soixante-neuf, or “sixty-nine” in French.Įnglish picked up sixty-nine by the 1880s, with its numerical shorthand, 69, familiar by the 1970s.Īs long as there have been humans, though, there probably has been the practice of a 69. It’s described in the ancient Indian Kama Sutra, for instance, as the Congress of a Crow position. Vive la France! The slang 69 goes back, if you can believe it, to the French Revolution.
