Irrumatio

Irrumatio (also known as irrumation or by the colloquialism face-fucking) is a form of oral sex in which a person thrusts their penis into another person's mouth, in contrast to fellatio where the penis is being actively orally excited by a fellator. The difference lies mainly in which party takes the active part. By extension, irrumatio can also refer to the sexual technique of thrusting the penis between the thighs of a partner (intercrural sex).

In the ancient Roman sexual vocabulary, irrumatio is often treated as a form of oral rape (os impurum), in which a man forces his penis into someone else's mouth.

Etymology and history

The English nouns irrumatio and irrumation, and the verb irrumate, come from the Latin irrumāre, meaning to force receptive male oral sex. J. L. Butrica, in his review of R. W. Hooper's edition of The Priapus Poems, a corpus of poems known as Priapeia in Latin, states that "some Roman sexual practices, like irrumatio, lack simple English equivalents".

There is some conjecture among linguists, as yet unresolved, that irrŭmātio may be connected with the Latin word rūmen, rūminis, the throat and gullet, whence 'ruminate', to chew the cud, therefore meaning 'insertion into the throat'. Others connect it with rūma or rūmis, an obsolete word for a teat, hence it would mean "giving milk", "giving to suck". (Compare the word fellō, which literally meant "suck (milk)" before it acquired its sexual sense.)

As the quotation from Butrica suggests and an article by W. A. Krenkel shows, irrumatio was regarded as a distinct sexual practice in ancient Rome. J. N. Adams states that "it was a standard joke to speak of irrumatio as a means of silencing someone".