Let a Simile Be Your Umbrella

Adultery and Fraternization Every scandal has its own lexicon. There stood Kelly Flinn, Air Force first lieutenant, pioneer female B-52 pilot, accused of adultery and its coverup. "How can they accuse her of adultery?" asked a colleague. "She's single. The married guy was the adulterer." Yes and no. The noun adultery, which appeared in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, comes from the Latin verb adulterare, "to corrupt," from which we also get adulterate. (It's not the root of adult; that's from adultus, past participle of adolescere, "to grow up.") The word is poetically defined by the O.E.D. as "violation of the marriage bed." Other dictionaries use variations of "voluntary sexual intercourse between a married person and someone not his or her spouse." In general speech, adultery is "an extramarital affair" or, more informally, "playin' around"; in politics, the candidate so playing is said to have "a zipper problem." "Whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adulterie," reads a 1590 translation of Matthew 5:28. But the act lost its male identity and was dramatized by Nathaniel Hawthorne in his 1850 novel, The Scarlet Letter; the "A" for adultery was "embroidered and illuminated" on Hester Prynne's bosom as a punishment. Under most religious law, the married participant is an adulterer and the single one merely a fornicator. Under the old common-law rule, however, "both participants commit adultery if the married participant is a woman," Bryan Garner, editor of Black's Law Dictionary, tells me. "But if the woman is the unmarried one, both participants are fornicators, not adulterers." Seems unfair; why? "This rule is premised on whether there is a possibility of adulterating the blood within a family. Offspring from adulterous unions were called adulterism." What do courts say today? "Under modern statutory law," Garner says, "some courts hold that the unmarried participant is not guilty of adultery (that only the married participant is), but others hold that both participants are adulterers." The Armed Services Manual for Courts-Martial, Article 134, "Adultery," says that the act has occurred when sexual intercourse has taken place and "the accused person or the other person was married to someone else." Both participants in an adulterous relationship have come to be understood as engaging in adultery, no matter which one is married. When adulterer or the less common adulteress is used, however, it usually identifies a married participant. Nobody calls the kids adulterini anymore.Safire, William is the author of 'Let a Simile Be Your Umbrella' with ISBN 9780609609477 and ISBN 0609609475.