Word of the week: pecker
n penis. A common misconception is that, to Brits, this means “chin” – hence the phrase “keep your pecker up.” Sorry folks, but in the U.K. “pecker” means exactly the same thing as it does in the U.S. The phrase “keep your pecker up” is probably derived from a time when a “pecker” was simply a reference to a bird’s beak and encouraged keeping your head held high. I understand that the word became a euphemism for “penis” after the poet Catullus used it to refer to his love Lesbia’s pet sparrow in a rather suggestive poem which drew some fairly blatant parallels.
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