Just Sayin'

We all know that we can’t, or don’t, say the full F-word on broadcast radio or TV or in polite company. Except we say the abbreviation “F-ing” this or “F-ing” that now on a regular basis. Are we being “nicer”? I don’t think so.

OK, well, Cassidy Hutchinson didn’t have much choice, when quoting the former President while testifying to the January 6th committee, except to say “F-ing.” And, of course, he was certainly not the only President to audibly use the F-word. In print, we now replace one or more letters of the word with hyphens or asterisks.

I guess this is my age showing. I use the full F-word only when I’m REALLY angry or upset. But what’s worse Is, I hear the sanitized version creeping into my own daily language, which, I’m sorry, modern folks, has been coarsened as a result. If you see a cockroach on the floor with pretty colors on its back, it’s still a cockroach, and your house isn’t clean (sorry again, even cockroaches have fans).

I recently saw a movie in which a really beautiful British actress liberally used the F-word, and I was a little disappointed. Sexist and shallow of me, I know. Looks, gender, and nationality should not interfere with self-expression, and in her case, she was working from a script. But I thought, have we Americans now corrupted the Brits, who created the world’s most eloquent curses and oaths hundreds of years ago?

Actually, it’s not us who invented the F-word. I looked it up, and it more likely was the Germans or the Dutch, and even then, it had a mostly different meaning.

I do have to recognize that language is fluid. As a young student I once looked up a then-dirty word in the Oxford English dictionary and it was listed with the advisory “not in decent use.” But these days, you hear it quite a bit. I’m going to leave out what it is.

About the F-word, though, I guess that linguistic ship has sailed too, and the only way left to cleanse it is to use it in full all the time so it no longer shocks anyone. But what will replace it when we’re angry or ecstatic, or trying to make an important point? I will leave that to you young whippersnappers.