What does loin mean in Romeo and juilet?

Answer 1

"Loin" means what you think it means: a thigh. When Shakespeare uses it, it is like scissors and trousers: it is always plural. (Whoever heard of a scissor or a trouser?) Also when Shakespeare uses it, it is rarely literal. In King Lear Edgar says "I'll blanket my loins" meaning that he will wear a blanket around his thighs. Mostly though, because the sex organs are near the thighs, the loins are used as a figurative representation by means of a kind of synechdoche of the ability of a person to reproduce. In Hamlet, it's used both ways at the same time, when the player talks about there being about Hecuba's "lank and all o'erteemed loins a blanket": the blanket covers her thighs and they have given birth to many children.

So in the prologue to Romeo and Juliet, when it says "From forth the fatal loins of these two foes a pair of star-crossed lovers take their life" they mean that from the sex organs of the leaders of the feud two children are generated or, if you leave off the synechdoche, two children will be born to the leaders of the feud.

Shakespeare did use the word thigh as well. In Act II Scene 1 of Romeo and Juliet Mercutio says "I conjure thee by Rosaline's . . . quivering thigh, and the demesnes that there adjacent lie."