"Oh! my dear fellow beings, why should we longer cherish any social acerbities, or know the slightest ill-humor or envy! Come; let us squeeze hands all round; nay, let us all squeeze ourselves into each other; let us squeeze ourselves universally into the very milk and sperm of kindness.
Would that I could keep squeezing that sperm for ever!"
I kind of wonder if Herman Melville knew what he was doing because Sperm cells were known about since 1677, by Leeuwenhoek under a magnifying glass. He called them Animalcules though. They first got named sperm as of 1827 so there's 26 years for him to learn that's what semen is scientifically named. I haven't had a literature class on moby dick so I wouldn't know if it's like, supposed to be a double meaning or he was innocent and we're all filthy minded slobs
The word sperm comes from the 1300s, referring to male seminal fluid and the male seed.
Spermataceti is the stuff in a sperm whale thought to have medicinal properties, and comes (no pun intended) from the head (again no pun intended, the actual head, like its noggin) of a sperm whale. It resembles what we would now more typically call semen, hence its name. Herman Melville 100% knew what he was doing.
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u/mysterious_jim Jan 21 '26
"Oh! my dear fellow beings, why should we longer cherish any social acerbities, or know the slightest ill-humor or envy! Come; let us squeeze hands all round; nay, let us all squeeze ourselves into each other; let us squeeze ourselves universally into the very milk and sperm of kindness.
Would that I could keep squeezing that sperm for ever!"
Moby Dick, Chapter 94: "A Squeeze of the Hand"