The Clean Airwaves Act assumed that fucking is a participial adjective. But this is not correct. With a true adjective like lazy, you can alternate between Drown the lazy cat and Drown the cat which is lazy. But Drown the fucking cat is certainly not interchangeable with Drown the cat which is fucking.
As it happens, most expletives aren't genuine adverbs, either. One study notes that, while you can say That's too fucking bad, you can't say That's too very bad. Also, as linguist Geoffrey Nunberg pointed out, while you can imagine the dialogue How brilliant was it? Very, you would never hear the dialogue How brilliant was it? Fucking.
Please to enjoy.
my friend steve sent me that article a week or so back, and i thought it was decent. but, i also thought that they could have really strengthened their argument, which mainly revolved around current usages, by including the very real (and boring) origin of most curse words. especially in english, the curse words that accompany bodily functions were usually saxon words. the angles, who were the upper crust, deemed these words profane. profane, btw, means common. it is the opposite of holy. so, the idea that shit is the common word for taking a duke is rather non-offensive, non-scandalous reason.
ReplyDeletefurthermore, they could have pushed more into the area of language being abstract, and created by us. if we decided that chair is a "bad" word, it is. if our society doesn't consider shit, fuck, etc to be bad words, then they aren't.
so, curse on kasey gifford. curse on.
I agree Ed, it left me wanting more and the directions you described would have been interesting. I like boring word origins!
ReplyDeleteI believe the word you're looking for is etymology, Giff.
ReplyDelete