Quaint knowledge: a 'body-mind' pattern across Shakespeare's career

A pattern surrounds the use of the verb form 'acquaint' in the first half of Shakespeare's career which also reveals a gender bias: if the acquaintance is being made with a male or any neutral object, the surrounding language will give the audience or reader no grounds to presume that a sexual pun is in play (the word 'quaint' being a commonly used term in the early modern period for female genitals); if, on the other hand, the acquaintance is male to female or male to a gendered object, the surrounding language is routinely sexualised, suggesting that a double entendre is being activated in the verb. I focus as much on the surrounding language in these calculations as on the 'quaint' words because I contend that this is a viable method by which to determine potential nuances in the use of any word. Unlike Pauline Kiernan, whose work involves hunting down filthy puns in every use of dozens of words with potentially bawdy meanings, I acknowledge that Shakespeare's use of language was not routinely bawdy throughout, but the plays do give their audiences cues with which to listen for multiple meanings. In the second half of Shakespeare's career, the sexualised pun disappears altogether, suggesting that he was gravitating toward a use of the verb 'to acquaint' that was disconnected from any bodily connotation