horizontal

   pertaining to copulation

   From the normal posture of the parties. In many phrases such as horizontal aerobics, in which both participants take exercise; horizontal collaboration, or how some Frenchwomen greeted the German invader, earning the sobriquet collabos horizontales; horizontal conquest, where the victor takes the spoils; the horizontal life, or prostitution; horizontal jogging, the horizontal position, or copulation; etc. A grande horizontale is a well-known prostitute or unchaste woman:

    When their horizontal aerobics are concluded, they lie awhile, insensate and numb. (Sanders, 1987)

    ... 'horizontal collaboration' between 'respectable' women and Germans... was excoriated. (Burleigh, 2000 — nonetheless the German troops fathered some 50,000 children by Frenchwomen during the occupation)

    Women who associated with German troops would come to be known as collabos horizontales. (Ousby, 1997)

    ... diamonds and rubies... and other battle honours of her horizontal conquests. (Ustinov, 1966)

    ... women didn't seem to go in for all this casual, take-it-or-leave-it horizontal jogging that seems to lie at the very root of our society. (Matthew, 1983)

    Propinquity — that's what leads to the horizontal position. (N. Barber, 1981)

   Some will have been dismayed by her failure to shine in the various roles she has adopted to date — as a journalist on Paris Match, as a television personality, grande horizontale, film star. (A. Waugh in Daily Telegraph, 16 November 1996 writing about a royal duchess)