{"id":502572,"date":"2026-02-27T07:22:10","date_gmt":"2026-02-27T07:22:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/502572\/"},"modified":"2026-02-27T07:22:10","modified_gmt":"2026-02-27T07:22:10","slug":"how-bridgerton-landed-on-its-word-for-orgasm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/502572\/","title":{"rendered":"How ‘Bridgerton’ landed on its word for ‘orgasm’"},"content":{"rendered":"

LONDON (AP) \u2014 Francesca can\u2019t get no satisfaction in Season 4 of \u201cBridgerton.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cI can\u2019t tell you how many times I\u2019ve said the word \u2018pinnacle\u2019 in the last year of my life,\u201d laughs Hannah Dodd, the actor who plays her in the Netflix series returning Thursday.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s because the sixth Bridgerton sibling is on a personal quest to discover the secrets of female pleasure, and \u201cpinnacle\u201d is the word she, repeatedly, uses for the orgasm that eludes her.<\/p>\n

Part two of the fourth season<\/a> continues the fairytale love story between Benedict Bridgerton and the mysterious, masked Sophie,<\/a> but also includes updates on the rest of the sprawling family\u2019s romantic adventures. Newly wed to the Earl of Kilmartin, played by Victor Alli, Francesca realized that she is ignorant about what happens in a four-poster bed and resolves to discover the secrets of sex from her married friends and family.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\n AP AUDIO: The crisis? The point? For \u2018Bridgerton,\u2019 the word \u2018orgasm\u2019 wouldn\u2019t quite do\n <\/p>\n

How best to say it? The team behind Netflix\u2019s \u201cBridgerton\u201d had to workshop the proper word as one character searches for satisfaction.<\/p>\n

\u201cI wonder if that was a bit of a workshop with, like, what word they were going to use for it?\u201d Dodd mused during an interview.<\/p>\n

The answer is yes.<\/p>\n

Showrunner Jess Brownell confirms that they researched and discussed which term to use. A thesaurus helped.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt felt like \u2018orgasm\u2019 wasn\u2019t a word that was used in that time period,\u201d says Brownell. The show, based on the books by Julia Quinn<\/a> and produced by Shondaland, is set during Britain\u2019s Regency era, the early 19th century. \u201cIt needed to be a word that sounded right coming out of Francesca\u2019s mouth over and over again,\u201d Brownell adds.<\/p>\n

\u201cPinnacle\u201d was eventually deemed obscure and funny enough for the character to use.<\/p>\n

So did that term hit the spot?<\/p>\n

Jessica Cale, a novelist and historian of sex, says that \u201cpinnacle\u201d isn\u2019t quite historically accurate \u2014 but it is \u201cvery effective.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the more common terms that comes up a lot is \u2018the crisis,\u2019 which I think is probably the funniest one,\u201d Cale says.<\/p>\n

The word \u201corgasm\u201d was indeed around then \u2014 Oxford English Dictionary dates use of it to the late 1600\u2019s \u2014 but it was usually used as a clinical term, the first evidence of its use is in medical literature by physician George Thompson in 1671.<\/p>\n

Euphemisms have abounded for centuries. Cale references popular erotic fiction like \u201cFanny Hill,\u201d also known as \u201cMemoirs of a Woman of Pleasure,\u201d which was published in parts during the late 1740s \u2014 well before the \u201cBridgerton\u201d era.<\/a> The novel by John Cleland refers to orgasms as \u201c\u2018the point.\u2019 \u2018The critical period.\u2019 \u2018The die-away moment,\u2019 and \u2014 this is the best one \u2014 \u2018the critical ecstasy, the melting flow, into which nature, spent with an excess of pleasure, dissolves and dies away,\u2019\u201d Cale says.<\/p>\n

Whether Francesca\u2019s storyline resolves in crisis of the literal or more figurative kind, her character\u2019s pinnacle of another sort is yet to come, as Dodd is expected to take a larger role in a future season.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LONDON (AP) \u2014 Francesca can\u2019t get no satisfaction in Season 4 of \u201cBridgerton.\u201d \u201cI can\u2019t tell you how…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":502573,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[5534,199778,2389,49,48,3332,75,200688,200687,200683,200684,200685,200689,890,67862,348,200686],"class_list":["post-502572","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-arts-and-entertainment","tag-benedict-bridgerton","tag-books-and-literature","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-celebrity","tag-entertainment","tag-george-thompson","tag-hannah-dodd","tag-jess-brownell","tag-jessica-cale","tag-john-cleland","tag-julia-quinn","tag-lifestyle","tag-sex-and-sexuality","tag-tv","tag-victor-alli"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/502572","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=502572"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/502572\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/502573"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=502572"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=502572"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=502572"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}