The Daily Post’s Daily Prompt is No, Thank You.
It asks: If you could permanently ban a word from general usage, which one would it be? Why?
There are lots of words I wouldn’t mind hearing, or seeing, less often.
Some people use the same expression over and over. At one point, when I was a kid I said “super” to everything I liked. Now I tend to say “cool” or “awesome” — twice the variety!
Books sometimes repeat the same phrase or words over and over.
Spoken or in print, I cringe at too much swearing. Though it works well for some characters and stories. But in many cases if every other word is a swear then the words lose some of their power for when you might really need a good swear word. Like if you’e having an unusually sucky day or slam your finger in your car door.
If I’m super mad, I feel better with a good swear word or two. Sometimes three. It doesn’t happen often. I think it would lose some of it’s therapeutic benefit if I swore all the time.
Let’s say I had a friend named Polly and every day she says, “Where’s the fu***** ice cream?” If she says it again today then I would assume things are good with her.
But if Polly almost never swears until just now when she comes in where I’m about to dig-in to two scoops of rocky road and says, “Where’s the fu***** ice cream?” Then I’m going to have a pretty good idea that either Polly had one spectacularly sucky day or that there’s something very wrong with the ice cream and we must dispose of it immediately before it injures someone.
I don’t like too much repetition of any word or words — particularly swear or cuss words. But I wouldn’t ban any of them. It would sensor expression. It’s akin to book burning.
Even the worst of swears might save someone from a batch of dangerous ice cream.
aLightningbug 