Euphemism
Oops, I totally forgot the whole reason I started that entry on Sturgeon.
It's 'cause I just read a story of his called "The Blue Letter" (a piece of non-sf lit-fic that I find puzzling; I'm just not getting what's going on in the protagonist's head, and it's the kind of story that's all about the internal transformation the protagonist goes through), and a page into it the protagonist is snuggling with a woman after dancing with her, and she says, more or less, "Look, your wife won't be coming out here to join you for a while yet, let's not deprive ourselves of each other" (with the clear implication that she's saying "let's sleep together"). And they kiss a little, and then we get this:
"She turned her head slightly, stroking his lips with hers, a kitten-paw touch and a high little sound spelled with m's escaped her. His shoulders and arms were rock-hard."
His shoulders and arms. Uh-huh.
The great thing about that is that it makes completely clear exactly what the author's really getting at, while explicitly showing nothing that any would-be censor could object to (remember, we're talking 1946 here).