Samuel Pepys wrote his famous diary in shorthand, but he took a further precaution when writing about his amorous adventures — he adopted words based on Spanish, French, and Italian: “I did come to sit avec [with] Betty Michell, and there had her main [hand], which elle [she] did give me very frankly now, and did hazer [make] whatever I voudrais avec l’ [would have with her], which did plaisir [pleasure] me grandement [greatly].” “The garbled foreign phrases he often used for sexual incidents had something to do with concealment perhaps, much more with his pleasure in marking off sexual...