Wednesday, August 20, 2008

"Piffle"


My Grandmother used to say “sugar” all the time when she wasn’t referring to anything sweet. I remember years ago my dad having a conversation with me about how he’d rather I just say what I was really feeling instead of substituting another word for it. He went on to stress that ideally he’d rather I didn’t even think like that.

I have this same battle with some of my boy scouts. Just like Denae’s use of “piffle” they have created quite a few cuss word substitutes that I find as offensive as the words they are replacing, especially when they preserve the same starting sound and inflection that Granny had with her “sugar”.

Just finding substitute words doesn’t fix the problem. It just mildly camouflages it.

7 comments:

  1. So are you 1/2 proud of me? ;) I'll try to stop saying "My" word, but it really seems to summarize my feelings at the time. I have really enjoyed the "swearing" series this week. Especially, with Danae standing on the street corner spouting off words that used to be foul, but no one uses any more. I suppose I could substitute "Daylights", but it goes back to your "sugar" analogy.

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  2. What if you use a word that is a 'swear word', but you don't mean it the same way? Is it still cussing?

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  3. Can I assume you're refering to my favorite "Rogism"?

    "Come here you little $#!*"

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  4. That would be the one I was thinking of.

    I also have friends who use swear words as terms of endearment, or in an otherwise non-cussing manner.

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  5. Anonymous4:57 PM

    I communicate a lot online through Instant messanging, in game chatting, and so forth, and I find people using what I call Keyboard shortcuts for words and phrases that they would not actually speak. Most of them are acronyms for the actual phrases like "lol" is used for Laugh out loud. These people use these keyboard shortcuts to say words that I know they would find offensive if the words were spoken outloud in their presence.

    I wonder why they think it is ok to do this....

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  6. At tonight's scout activity a few of the boys were using the word "pimped". So I asked them to define the word. There was an awkward silence and a few just said, "well, you know". I then suggested that if they were that uncomfortable defining it out loud that maybe they shouldn't use it in conversation.

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  7. http://www.cnn.com/2008/SHOWBIZ/TV/09/02/tv.what.the.frak.ap/index.html

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