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The following poem occurs in a footnote by Richard Burton in his Arabian Nights translation, at the beginning of the Tale of Aziz and Azizah, in night 112. Burton elaborates on the "fond affection of clever women for fools", which he says is explained by the couplet:

I love my love with an S—
Because he is stupid and not intellectual

The dash occurs in the original; I guess it is supposed to censor a word rhyming with "intellectual" for either humorous or prudish reasons (or both), but I cannot think of a way to fill in the blank that makes sense.

How should this poem be completed?

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    Note that if it were a censored word starting with S, it would be preceded by "a", not "an", because the word would begin with a consonant sound. Uniquely, the letter S itself takes "an" because it is pronounced "ess".
    – nanoman
    Commented Nov 27 at 21:14
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    @nanoman Not unique to S; same applies to F (ef), H (aitch), L (el), M (em), N (en), R (ar), X (ex).
    – shoover
    Commented Nov 27 at 22:52
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    @shoover I meant uniquely among words that could start with S.
    – nanoman
    Commented Nov 27 at 23:31

1 Answer 1

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It isn't a poem, and the dash after the S isn't about censorship.

It refers to a Victorian parlour game (mentioned in Through the Looking-Glass where players had to think of adjectives to describe their 'lover', and sometimes other words, all beginning with a particular letter. e.g. "I love my love with an A because he is amiable. His name is Adam and he lives in Amsterdam." Burton is apparently imagining that the letter is 'S' and the player has chosen 'stupid'.

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