Language has been, and always will be, volatile, emotionally charged and constantly changing. Words come and go, and occasionally they come back into fashion, but there are a select few that don’t get spoken without some penance involved.
The late George Carlin referred to feces, urine, a sex act, female genitalia, insulting monikers about sexual relations (twice) and breasts to come up with his infamous list of seven “dirty” words unspeakable on the airwaves. I’m sure that my clues make it somewhat easy to guess correctly what most of the originals are without offending anybody.
In our so-called modern world, two words are still volatile enough to warrant censure: the “f” word (what in A Christmas Story was spoken as “fuuuuudddddge”), and the “n” word.
Recently I overheard a grammarian use a word that raised some eyebrows. The person was referring to a tightwad who apparently didn’t just pinch pennies, but rubbed Lincoln’s beard raw. The poor literary adept person then wondered why the tightwad was so niggardly. Heads spun around, white and otherwise. It was as if somebody had said the “f” word out loud. I didn’t even look up from my lunch.
The word means stingy or miserly. It has nothing to do with anything pertaining to the African American heartache associated with the original “n” word. But the question lingered whether the negativity associated with an unrelated word could condemn it to obscurity. Hopefully not. Words have a connection to what we learn and have learned from our past and future, so trying to blot them out does nothing.
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