The Ten Most Used Words in Erotoca

[BobbyBrandt]

I can't explain how my mind works sometimes...

For example, I will be researching a topic for a story and wind up on Wikipedia. Some link within a particular article will catch my attention and I'll click on it. Then another link catches my attention and I'm off on a completely different tangent.

Today, this tangent-hopping brought me to, of all places, the Wikipedia page for Literotica. After reading the details, I wound up checking out the cited references and came across an article written by Oliver Wheaton back in 2015 that claims to list the ten most used words in erotic literature, citing stories posted on this site as the basis for the claim.

In 2015, I only had one story posted on Literotica, and it contained the number 2 (Mom), 6 (Mother), and 7 (Wife) listed words.

Is your writing keeping up with the listed words?

 

[MillieDynamite]

For better context, what are the ten most used words?

 

[Euphony]

For better context, what are the ten most used words?

1. C**k

2. Mom (!)

3. Pussy

4. Master

5. Mouth

6. Mother

7. Wife

8. A**hole

9. Mistress

 

[MillieDynamite]

OIC, so not thrust, pounded, beat his meat.

 

[Euphony]

Cock me! Mom's pussy master mouthed "mother" to his wife's asshole as if it were his mistress's!

That business handled, I can go back to writing for my characters and not the masses.

 

[Winter_Fare]

Cock me! Mom's pussy master mouthed "mother" to his wife's asshole as if it were his mistress's!

That business handled, I can go back to writing for my characters and not the masses.

That's actually weirdly poetic in a six tequila sorta way

 

[lovecraft68]

We need a list just for the forum


1-I
2-Me
3-Underage ( I want a sign, its been so many days without an under aged question)
4-One bomb
5-Red H
6-Troll
7-Alt
8-Ratings
9-What category
10-Ignore

 

[Cagivagurl]

I would have thought regardless of the genre, the most widely used words would have been (In no particular order)
And...
The...
It...
Was...
And so forth...
Cagivagurl

 

[YesIamReal]

I would probably start with a correctly spelled "erotica"

 

[Euphony]

I would have thought regardless of the genre, the most widely used words would have been (In no particular order)
And...
The...
It...
Was...
And so forth...
Cagivagurl

It's not a raw words list.

Looks like a self-curated "erotic" words list.

There's a word cloud on the referenced blog that at least gives away those that registered in the results.

Usual suspects. LOTS of what I'd call "category expectation" words so, of course they dominate their respective areas and the results.

 

[Bramblethorn]

I would have thought regardless of the genre, the most widely used words would have been (In no particular order)
And...
The...
It...
Was...
And so forth...
Cagivagurl

From looking at the writeup on his site, and checking the software he used, I think it's filtering out common "stop words" of that kind.

 

[Cagivagurl]

From looking at the writeup on his site, and checking the software he used, I think it's filtering out common "stop words" of that kind.

Perhaps, but it isn't what he said....
It is a sunny Sunday morning...
Too nice to disagree.
Plus I left out my favourite...
Fuck...
Sorry.
Cagivagurl

 

[Bramblethorn]

Perhaps, but it isn't what he said....

Yeah, I think the journalist who wrote that article has misunderstood the blog post he's reading.

Looking at the source http://markallenthornton.com/blog/sexual-demographics/ I don't see anything there that amounts to a "top nine" list. My guess is that the Metro journalist looked at the word cloud near the top of that page, picked the nine biggest words in that cloud, and assumed that they were the nine most common.

But that's not actually a cloud of "most common words on Literotica". It's a comparison between categories, showing which words are distinctive to each:

"The Literotica categories are denoted by labels and the colors of words in their respective segments of the cloud. The size of the words scales with the degree to which they are disproportionately used in stories of that category (relative to the others)."

So the word "Mom" isn't big because it's one of Literotica's most commonly-used words. It's big because Incest/Taboo uses "Mom" much more often than other categories use it. Similarly, "asshole" is a stand-out word in Anal, "master" and "mistress" for BDSM, yada yada.

Not sure whether "Cock" is coming from Toys or Anal; the way it's drawn it could be either, but I'd guess Toys.

 

[Winter_Fare]

So erm... Pussy is a big word in Gay Male category but no hands or fingers in Lesbian Sex?? WTF

Edit sorry, no the gay male is the yellow writing derp. Pussy was big in group sex.

 

[Athalia]

I think that, of all the erotic-referencing words, "cunt" and "fuck" would have to be right up there, along with all the breast-related words (tits, boobs, etc.)

And I think it's amusing that he thinks that 65% of the writers here are men. That leaves 35% in the "female" or "declined to state" category. I suspect the male percentage is a bit higher. I'll bet he's going by how writers identify themselves on their biographies, but I don't know if there's a way to parse that. Or that there used to be a way to parse that in the old system.

 

[Bramblethorn]

I think that, of all the erotic-referencing words, "cunt" and "fuck" would have to be right up there, along with all the breast-related words (tits, boobs, etc.)

And I think it's amusing that he thinks that 65% of the writers here are men. That leaves 35% in the "female" or "declined to state" category. I suspect the male percentage is a bit higher. I'll bet he's going by how writers identify themselves on their biographies, but I don't know if there's a way to parse that. Or that there used to be a way to parse that in the old system.

The source for the Metro article is http://markallenthornton.com/blog/sexual-demographics/ although Metro's not reporting very accurately.

"Using Python and Beautiful Soup, I scraped ~300,000 erotic stories from Literotica.com... I also scraped the public profiles of the authors (~65K) of these stories, obtaining a variety of useful self-reported information from many of them including sex, age, sexual orientation, and relationships status... The results reported below are derived from a dataset composed of 290,844 erotic stories by 62,789 authors. Of those authors, 33% were female, 44% were male, 2% were a couple sharing an account, .5% were transsexual (Literotica's term), and the rest did not report their sex."

Later on, he does some comparisons between demographics, excluding the "not reported" etc. In a comparison between male and female authors he mentions "In general, men write about 2/3rds of the stories", which I guess would round to 65%, but the context implies that this is only out of the stories where the author is identified as male or female.

 

[R. Richard]

I would probably start with a correctly spelled "erotica"

You have to understand that many AH people are not toney cognoscenti, but rather more to the crude motherfucker end of the line. I spent my younger years in South Central Los Angeles, along with the pimps, the 'ho's and the grifters. Things like spelling were not of paramount importance, as many of the denizens could not read. Whi' Boy was regarded as too fussy, until I gained the title 'Willie Green.' My skill with my .357 magnum was much more important than my proper use of English grammar.

 

[Voboy]

1. C**k

2. Mom (!)

3. Pussy

4. Master

5. Mouth

6. Mother

7. Wife

8. A**hole

9. Mistress

I routinely use 1, 3, 5, and probably 7. I might occasionally use 2 (not in a sexual sense) and 8 (usually as an insult). 4 and 9 I find cringeworthy.

 

[Kumquatqueen]

Mouth is probably in all my stories.

Cock gets used a lot in stories where there is one (or more)

Asshole/arsehole get used sparingly when referring to a physical one, hole is more likely. Gets used sparingly as an insult.

Master/Mistress - not much even in my BDSM stories. I have one guy who uses the word Mistress routinely, but generally my subs go for sir or ma'am or just a general respectful demeanor.

Pussy - rarely. I prefer to just say 'inside her' or skip directly to the powerful 'cunt'.

Mother, Mom, wife - one guy from Birmingham (UK) has a Mom, ditto a couple Americans phone theirs. Others may mention a mum, mother or ma, but never in any erotic context. A few characters have, had or are a wife (or husband), but the concept isn't erotic to me.

 

[Britva415]

We need a list just for the forum


1-I
2-Me
3-Underage ( I want a sign, its been so many days without an under aged question)
4-One bomb
5-Red H
6-Troll
7-Alt
8-Ratings
9-What category
10-Ignore

The whole forum? Those are top-10 for AH, sure

 

[Britva415]

I would probably start with a correctly spelled "erotica"

Erotica filled with the word "erotica" would be so delightfully meta!

 

[erotica_n_s]

I haven't had anything published - because I haven't written any stories out in full - but if I did, these would probably be the words I'd over-use:

• shapely
• tenderly
• exquisite/-ly
• glorious/-ly
• wondrous/-ly
• caress
• [she] sighed
• [she] giggled
• [she] moaned
• climax

Maybe just as well I haven't had anything published!

 

[Rustyoznail]

I would probably start with a correctly spelled "erotica"

Yes, it's eroticar.

 

[StillStunned]

Not sure about my written erotica, but I'm certain that the word that's most used in my real-life experiences is a disappointed "oh."

 

[8letters]

The source for the Metro article is http://markallenthornton.com/blog/sexual-demographics/ although Metro's not reporting very accurately.

"Using Python and Beautiful Soup, I scraped ~300,000 erotic stories from Literotica.com... I also scraped the public profiles of the authors (~65K) of these stories, obtaining a variety of useful self-reported information from many of them including sex, age, sexual orientation, and relationships status... The results reported below are derived from a dataset composed of 290,844 erotic stories by 62,789 authors. Of those authors, 33% were female, 44% were male, 2% were a couple sharing an account, .5% were transsexual (Literotica's term), and the rest did not report their sex."

Later on, he does some comparisons between demographics, excluding the "not reported" etc. In a comparison between male and female authors he mentions "In general, men write about 2/3rds of the stories", which I guess would round to 65%, but the context implies that this is only out of the stories where the author is identified as male or female.

Let me say that the orientation numbers in the blog post look really suspect. Here are the counts of reported gender of the 6,230 authors who have published a story since 8/30/23 (20,407 stories):

Maybe things were different in 2015, maybe it was how the stories were pulled, but it's hard for me to believe that only 20% of the authors for the stories that were pulled didn't report their sex. "No Answer" and "Blank" are so common that the kind of analysis he did should be meaningless. I did some similar analysis in 2023, and @KeithD rightly called them out as meaningless.

Here is an analysis I did with report gender that I think is meaningful.