Letters of eclectic commentary featuring the wit and wisdom of a garrulous geezer and {Dana}, a persistent hallucination and charming literary device.
"Everything has gotten vulgar and out of line for children to watch. It's more of a swearing match." -Bubba Smith
Dear Gentlereaders,
The word feck, I refer here to that specific word, not to that other word it reminds you of, has been around for a long time and has had various and sundry meanings as time went by.
Wikipedia: The most popular and widespread modern use of the term is as a slang expletive in Irish English, employed as a less serious alternative to the expletive (word you're thinking of) to express disbelief, surprise, pain, anger, or contempt. It notably lacks the sexual connotations that (word you're thinking of) has. My emphasises.
{Should I and our gentlereaders assume that (word you're thinking of) is the word...}
Yes, obviously, feck, on the other hand, is a minced oath, a term I recently discovered that shouldn't be confused with minced meat (a.k.a. ground meat, a.k.a. hamburger), or the culinary obscenity called Mincemeat.
Wikipedia again: A minced oath is a euphemistic expression formed by deliberately misspelling, mispronouncing, or replacing a part of a profane, blasphemous, or taboo word or phrase to reduce the original term's objectionable characteristics.
{So, instead of saying (word you're thinking of), you say feck?}
Not usually, not, but I like the way the Irish have cleaned up this particular "dirty" word.
I do say (word you're thinking of) from time to time, but only if/when it's situationally appropriate — context is everything when it comes to words — to preserve its power. I prefer a milder but more socially acceptable cuss word like damn for everyday use.
On the other hand, if I were able to communicate with the late, great Sister Mary McGillicuddy, I would switch to darn.
Context.
Point of information (you learn something every day if you're paying attention) shite, which sounds like a minced oath to most Americans, or at least to this one, is actually a synonym of (word you're thinking of) in the countries where it's regularly used and is considered to be just as vulgar as (word you're thinking of).
You should keep this in mind if you find yourself visiting one of the English-speaking countries of the Commonwealth.
To me, and I suspect to many of muh fellow 'Meracuns, shite sounds like a minced version of (word you're thinking of), and a funny one at that. I spell it shyte, a touch of personal mincing, I guess, but still only deploy it cautiously in my writing.
{Fascinating. Anyways...}
(Word you're thinking of), until relatively recently considered the mother (see what I did there) of all curse words, has lost a great deal of its power because it's so commonly used nowadays. It's so commonly used/encountered as to render minced oath versions almost pointless. Everyone knows what the F in WTF stands for. It ain't feck, and it's everywhere.
The Federal Communications Commission still regulates what can be said on broadcast radio and TV, but as far as I can tell, the rules are somewhat flexible. Irregardless, when a given word is "bleeped" in some form or fashion, nowadays it's usually easy to figure out what the specific word is.
And yet, a paradox.
We can't bring ourselves to toss out the tot with the Jacuzzi water and let anyone say anything they please on the (supposedly) publicly owned airwaves as well as other forms of public communication.
Perhaps all words are not created equal?
On a related note, I personally think that you might as well say (word you're thinking of) as say frick (which sounds stupid) or frig, a ugly sounding word that for many of us citizens of a certain age is a slang term for masturbation. We find friggin' children freely using it somewhat disconcerting.
I can't remember who he was or what kind of car it was. The dude in question worked, briefly, in the supermarket I worked in at the time, my first "real" job.
I first heard George Carlin's famous bit about the seven dirty words you can't say on television via an 8-track tape (click-click) in that car in the early 70s. This tracks (see what I did there? again!) because a bit o'- googlin' revealed that Mr. Carlin's monologue, which is famous enough to have its own Wikipedia article, dates to 1972.
You could hear those words if you saw him perform live, or via record or tape, but you couldn't hear them on broadcast radio or TV. This is still true even though there is no, and never has been, an official list. It was just a bit of Carlin's shtick.
TRIGGER WARNING! The following YouTube clip contains all seven of the dirty words. If you're a nun or a monk who has been living in an isolated, semi-secret facility since before roughly 1965, or a parent with little kids in the room who finds toddlers who talk like truck drivers jarring, don't say you weren't warned.
(Apropos of nothing much, I saw a lot of great concerts there in the 1970s, and never paid more than 20 bucks for the privilege.)
But he lost me when he turned bitter, depressing, and nihilistic in the 90s. Wikipedia says that version of his act made him more popular than ever, which would seem to be an indication of the state of the Republic that continues today. But that's not my point.
{There's a point?!?}
Don't be snarky, there's always a point... eventually.
Big BUT, this column is already late, and I'm running very low on motivation just now. I'm dealing with some health problems that are doing a number on my energy levels and generating brain fog, hopefully not permanently. So, going forward, if a given column is a day or two late, and/or not as long as you think it should be, please forgive me. If you would like a refund, please contact me at: mejotom824@endelite.com.
{I guess you're not going to mention the fact you've rewritten this part of the column so many times that...}
My point? It's occurred to me that Mr. Carlin's notion that words are just words invalidated itself every time he used words. His words made us laugh; other words make us cry. We have to be careful about exactly what we say to whom if we don't want to destroy a relationship or start a war.
Words are incredibly powerful, and I'm certain my gentlereaders can think of a thousand examples without my help. I'll start, how about so-called hate speech? No shortage of H. sapiens seem to be preoccupied with that subject just now.
And didn't somebody say something about that in the beginning was the word?
Colonel Cranky
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