About

Cleveland Steamer is an NSFW slang phrase used to describe a sexual act in which someone defecates onto another person's chest and then sits down and rocks back and forth, like a steamroller. Though unconfirmed, multiple posts on various sites claim the term stemmed from a Usenet thread in 1995 in which "Cleveland Steamer" was coined after a piece of restaurant equipment of the same name. The term was popularized as a running gag on the animated adult sitcom Family Guy in the early 2000s. In the early 2020s, the term saw renewed interest in the posts of Don't Google shock media trends perpetuated on TikTok and Twitter / X, among others.

Origin

According to multiple sources on various websites, including an Urban Dictionary^[8] post, a thread on The Straight Dope^[9] message board, an archived discussion on Wikipedia^[10] and a Reddit^[11] thread, the term was first documented in 1995 on Usenet in a thread that no longer exists. Some of these users claim it was named after a piece of restaurant equipment also called the Cleveland Steamer in the 1995 Usenet post, though this is unconfirmed.

An early reference to the "Cleveland Steamer" slang term about the sexual act appeared in a scene featured in season 2, episode 11 of Family Guy, which first aired on April 18th, 2000. The scene shows photographer Robert Maplethorpe drawing a kid named Tim's picture with baseball hall of famer Reggie Jackson defecating upon the child.^[1] Another early usage of the term comes from season 3 episode 9^[2] in which Peter Griffin dresses up like a hooker and asks Lois, "Whaddaya want, a Cleveland Steamer?" The scene, which aired on September 5th, 2001, is shown below.^[3]

On October 6th, 2004, Urban Dictionary^[4] user admin@jordantate.com posted a definition for the term to the site, gathering over 25,000 likes in 20 years.

Spread

On April 18th, 2013, RuPaul posted a tweet^[5] that read, "Awkward to ask your life partner for a 'Cleveland Steamer', which is precisely why hookers actually save marriages," gathering over 70 likes in 11 years.

On June 11th, 2016, Redditor^[6] /u/rufusb22 posted an image of a machine to the subreddit /r/mildlyinteresting, writing, "This is an actual Cleveland Steamer." The post gathered over 1,000 likes in nine years.

On December 22nd, 2019, YouTuber^[7] Definition of the Day posted a video about the slang term, gathering over 300,000 views in five years.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References