These laws in the United States have been challenged and have sometimes been found unconstitutional or been replaced with different legislation. The word sod, a noun or verb (to 'sod off') used as an insult, is derived from sodomite. It is a general-purpose insult term for anyone the speaker dislikes without specific reference to their sexual behaviour.
(The word 'sod' also has a meaning of '(clump of) earth' with an unrelated etymology, in which sense it is rare but not offensive.) Sod is used as slang in the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth and is considered mildly offensive. Many cognates in other languages, such as French sodomie (verb sodomiser), Spanish sodomía (verb sodomizar), and Portuguese sodomia (verb sodomizar), are used exclusively for penetrative anal sex, at least since the early nineteenth century.
