Dave's ESL Cafe's Student Discussion Forums

[RedRose]

Today I watched a sitcom named everybody love Raymond in which Ramond tells his wife:"we've been trying to make a baby for last three month, but... I should've impregnated you by now. My father said some stuff, us Barones, we're supposed to be really vireal"

Teachers, what dose Vireal mean here?

Thanks

[CP]

The word is virile, meaning manly, from the Latin word for man, vir.

The title of the show is Everybody Loves Raymond. Raymond started as a stand-up comedian, and a pretty funny one.
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You live a new life for every new language you speak. -Czech proverb

[RedRose]

thanks, CP.

[iitimone7]

...to further explain what Raymond meant is that all of the men in his family should be abe to impregnate a woman each time they are
se--ually active with her.

iitimone7

[2006]

iitimone

That's not true; no matter how virile a man is, he can't impregnate a woman unless she gives him an egg to work with.

Besides 'manly', virile just means ''capable of functioning as a male in copulation'', which means being able to have sex.

[bud]

I pretty much agree with Iitimone. Being virile means more than being able to copulate. A sterile male can copulate, but his sperm won't impregnate a woman. He is not virile in my understanding of the word.

Every time? Well, not technically, but that is how people use the word when they're joking around. It's the equivalent of saying that a woman "pops them out," meaning she easily gets pregnant - and often. "Them" means babies.

Here is a link to what Wikipedia says:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virile

[RedRose]

[bud]

[RedRose]

[bud]

Yes, but it's not an exact equivalent for "virile" for men. At least, not in the "wink, wink, nudge, nudge" sort of way.

I mean, to say that a woman is fertile just means that she is in her child-bearing years and is not sterile. It's probably what "virile" technically means for men. But as mentioned before in this thread, "virile" does tend to take on extra meaning in a casual and jovial kind of situation. I don't know why that doesn't happen for "fertile" - at least not in my experience.

Does this help at all? Do you understand this attempt at an explanation?

[RedRose]