BE WARNED. This blog entry contains language that you may not appreciate. But it is about those words that I write.
Over the course of the last several years I have become acutely aware of a breakdown in decent language in our society. I would guess it is a world wide phenomenon. I find more and more people using coarse or foul language than ever before. Much of the blame can be laid at the feet of the media which has continued to push the envelope of decency looking for a larger share of an audience. Audience means market and market means money. Money seems to drive most things.
When I left a professional office environment and stepped into a retail market I was pretty amazed at the difference in verbiage and conversation. I realize I have led a sheltered life and there are many work environments where coarse language and smutty conversation is the norm. I was in the service, although it was 40 years ago, and the language and conversation there was not what I had been exposed to before. When I left the service I entered a professional career where coarse language and rude conversation was not professional and in most cases would have at least lost you business and at worse lost you your job.
Language certainly evolves. Technology and the arts, religion and society require new words as new things are invented and concepts arise. Words also take on new meanings and can be used to express different ideas than before.
Bad meant not good but became THE word among the younger generation for real good. As in “that band is so BAD.” Cool took on a new meaning totally unrelated to temperature. Even words that describe unpleasant things have taken on whole new meanings. A word that I still do not like is the common word for excrement. I know in some areas the common or what I would call street name is not considered a bad word. The amazing thing to me is that it has become a word meaning something desirable or good. As in “That is great shit.”
Of particular revulsion to me is the F word. Say “F-word” to about anyone familiar with the English language and they know exactly what you are talking about. This word has a particularly terrible history. Allow me to quote from the site dictionary.com. Warning. The F word is used throughout this definition.
Word History: The obscenity fuck is a very old word and has been considered shocking from the first, though it is seen in print much more often now than in the past. Its first known occurrence, in code because of its unacceptability, is in a poem composed in a mixture of Latin and English sometime before 1500. The poem, which satirizes the Carmelite friars of Cambridge, England, takes its title, "Flen flyys," from the first words of its opening line, "Flen, flyys, and freris," that is, "fleas, flies, and friars." The line that contains fuck reads "Non sunt in coeli, quia gxddbov xxkxzt pg ifmk." The Latin words "Non sunt in coeli, quia," mean "they [the friars] are not in heaven, since." The code "gxddbov xxkxzt pg ifmk" is easily broken by simply substituting the preceding letter in the alphabet, keeping in mind differences in the alphabet and in spelling between then and now: i was then used for both i and j; v was used for both u and v; and vv was used for w. This yields "fvccant [a fake Latin form] vvivys of heli." The whole thus reads in translation: "They are not in heaven because they fuck wives of Ely [a town near Cambridge]."
When I was in college, many years ago, I was an English major and took a word etymology course in which we learned the origins of words and how to look at words and sort out their Greek, Latin, and other origins. This word was most recently from Old French but had much earlier origins. I researched it a bit just now but do not find the path beyond Old French. In the beginning, the word that this word evolved from meant to inflict bodily harm in the act of copulation.
Rape would be the best modern English word. But not just rape, but rape with intent of great harm. Many rapes are committed in our day that is only rape by law. As in having sex with an under age female. And many rapes occur under the influence of alcohol or mind altering drugs. Date rape, so prevalent on school campuses, is such a case. The origins of the F-word, however, is the rape as in an invading army killing, mutilating, plundering and raping.
A horrible word. And while to many the word has evolved to mean much less, this word has a background that to me is too terrible to allow it’s amelioration into common conversation.
Words are not “just words.” Word meanings are vital to communications at all levels. If I were to say to you, “Garage pencil branch antenna grind, steeple denim rebar cathode lug draft opus football! “what would your response be?
And if I continued you might have me seen by professionals beginning with a physician.
Yes words evolve. But words have a history. And to circumvent entirely a word’s history is to invalidate the word altogether. Words brand us. Our choice of words delineate who we are to others. We identify ourselves by the words we use.
Sorry, but former curse words are still an affront to me. Please do not use them in conversation with me. I don’t appreciate it. One should, their entire lives, stretch their vocabulary and reach more articulate and precise verbiage.
