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Blanche recently came across an intriguing discussion of a sexual practice known as figging, which involves inserting a piece of ginger into the ass as part of sex play. It seems from discussion on the internet that this is typically a precursor to spanking or caning, and that the ginger produces an excruciating burning sensation that may enhance the submissive experience.

Nearly everything that Miss Poubelle came across was heterosexually oriented, but she would be surprised if there are no gay people who have experimented with figging. (There is much discussion of the topic at figging.com.)

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lanche was amused by the descriptions of torrid figging sessions, but found herself more intrigued by the word itself. Why would one call this practice figging? Gingering would seem to be the more likely term.

To her surprise, she found that a variant of this word is actually listed in the Oxford English Dictionary as one of the meanings of feague. Feague is an obsolete verb which primarily refers to "whipping" or "beating."

However, a 1785 dictionary of English also lists to feague a horse, defined as "to put ginger up a horse's fundament, to make him lively and carry his tail well." Figging seems to be a pronunciation variant of feaguing, and occurs in this 1810 quote from a sporting magazine-- "He said the horse... was figged with ginger."

The OED suggests that feague or fig is related to German fegen and Dutch vegen, both of which mean "sweep, polish." The semantic connection with "whipping" or "beating" seems reasonable. Sweeping, whipping, polishing, and beating all involve striking or rubbing a surface with some instrument. But how do we get from sweeping, whipping, polishing, and beating to inserting ginger in the anus?

It is probably significant that all the early quotes that involve feaguing or figging are about horses. Miss Poubelle is no authority on horses, but she would imagine that putting ginger in a horse's ass is not quite kosher in the horse-trading world. The desired effect is presumably to make a tired, worn-out old nag appear to be an energetic, youthful stallion. So that figging a horse falls into the category of a shady business practice.

If this speculation is correct, then a connection to the word fake becomes likely. Fake is first attested as a bit of thieves' jargon. Its early range of meanings are nicely illustrated in a quote from a 1812 dictionary of "flash" language:

"To fake any person or place, to rob them; to fake a person may also imply to shoot, wound, or cut; to fake a man out and out, is to kill him; a man who inflicts wounds upon, or otherwise disfigures, himself, for any sinister purpose, is said to have faked himself; if a man's shoe happens to pinch or gall his foot, he will complain that his shoe fakes his foot sadly... to fake your slangs is to cut your irons in order to escape from custody; to fake your pin is to create a sore leg, or to cut it, as if accidentally... in hopes... to get into the doctor's list, &c.; to fake a screeve is to write any letter or other paper; to fake a screw is to shape out a skeleton or false key, for the purpose of screwing a particular place; to fake a cly is to pick a pocket."

Closely related to these examples of faking is the idea of making an animal appear better than it actually is in order to increase its selling price. If the purpose of inserting the ginger is to make the horse seem lively and increase its price, then this is a bit of fakery. So figging a horse is a variant of faking a horse.

Fake itself is probably also derived from feague, and the connection is the "sweep, polish" senses of the word. Faking is closely related to the idea of polishing or sweeping something up to make it appear other than it really is.

There is certainly plenty of sexual faking-- faked orgasms and faked pleasure are ubiquitous. But the descriptions of figging suggest a very real and painful practice that Miss Poubelle would avoid at all costs. She plans to restrict her fakery to that of literary drag queen and to save the unmolested ginger for dinner!