MORE than four decades after the sexual revolution, the word “vibrator” still has the power to elicit blushes, discomfort, snickering. And yet, according to the first academic, peer-reviewed studies of vibrator use, it is nearly as common an appliance in American households as the drip coffee maker or toaster oven.

Fifty-three percent of women and nearly half of all men report having used a vibrator, according to two new national surveys from Indiana University recently published in The Journal of Sexual Medicine.

And what the surveys make clear is that the vibrator  dismissed as a “masturbatory machine” for “sexually dysfunctional females” in The Journal of Popular Culture back in 1974  is being used by couples for shared pleasure. Eighty-one percent of women and 91 percent of men who’ve used one report having done so with a partner.

“What this tells us is we’ve reached a tipping point,” said Debby Herbenick, an author of the studies along with her Indiana University colleague Michael Reece. “Something once regarded as exotic has become commonplace.”