About Profanity

Okay, it's time. Let's talk about profanity.

A wise man named Spencer W. Kimball used to say: 

"Profanity is the effort of a feeble brain to express itself forcibly." 

I've seen several misquotings and misrememberings, including my own version:

"Profanity is the feeble attempt of a feeble mind to express itself forcibly."

But the original will suffice for my purpose here. I am calling for a halt to the gratuitous and excessive profanity in modern discourse, and for a return to more precise speech. (If your name is Jodi, don't worry. You're safe. See the very end of this post.)

Warning: This post contains profanity. The profanity is strictly for illustrative purposes. Don't get worked up over it.

The HP Meeting

When I was a new engineer, I was sitting in a department meeting. Several people were using profanity to emphasize the points they were trying to make. It was excessive, and it was unnecessary. Being a new guy, I didn't speak up, but someone else did. He quoted SWK. But he mangled the quote. If it had been delivered accurately, it would have had the desired effect, but the mangled version was a dud.

In fact, what followed was a moment of silence, and then a bearded hippie-type guy in the back muttered, "I  don't know what the fuck you're talkin' about."

That was back in 1981, in a time when people chose their words more carefully. Even if they cussed and swore in private, they were -- except for this one meeting -- circumspect in their public speech. Over the years, and through many different jobs, I have attended meetings where someone would let slip a cussword, then glance my way and say, "oops, sorry". 

(Parenthetically, I don't know why they apologized to me. Never in my career have I set myself up as a judge or a censor, or anything remotely like that, and yet ... well, maybe it's an aura I have. Who knows? I did notice that they apologized to me, and not to the women in the meeting.)

The 2016 Presidential Election

Then came the 2016 presidential election campaign. One of the candidates, Donald J. Trump, had no filter, as the saying goes. He cussed and swore all the time, in public as well as in private. The news media -- that is, the press, television reporters, and the Internet -- delighted in quoting him verbatim. This opened the floodgates. Suddenly it seemed that everybody felt empowered to use profanity in public, and so everybody did. Public profanity spread faster than a pandemic. (Okay, that's ironic.)

And it has stayed that way, throughout Trump's presidency and afterwards. It may be one of his lasting legacies, and that's a crying shame. It's way too late to put those horses back in the barn.

Like Father, Like Son

Let's go back again to 1981. I was fresh out of college. Our family car was a 1969 Plymouth Satellite, with a Mopar V8 engine. It wasn't a racing engine, just a good workhorse engine. But the car was 12 years old, and things were starting to wear out. We couldn't afford to take it into a mechanic, so for most things, I became the mechanic. 

I couldn't even afford a decent set of tools and a pair of jack stands. Instead, I had some two-foot lengths of old railroad tie in the trunk, plus an adjustable wrench, a pair of pliers, and a huge screwdriver. When I needed to work on the car, I would lift it with the tire jack, shove the railroad ties under the frame, and lower the car onto the railroad ties. Then I would crawl under the car and start swearing at it.

Yeah. Swearing at it. I learned quickly why mechanics have such foul mouths. Cusswords are better than WD-40 at loosening stuck bolts.

The starters on Mopar engines were notorious for wearing out, and rebuilt/replacement starters were even more so. I got so I could jack up the car, replace the starter, and have the car running again in less than 40 minutes. And 300 cusswords.

One day, I was out in the parking lot, underneath the car, replacing the starter again, when my two-year-old son drove up beside me on his little white riding car. He dismounted and lifted the seat. He pulled out of the storage compartment a piece of two-by-four lumber, his plastic wrench, and his plastic screwdriver. He shoved the two-by-four under the car. Then he lay down on his back, shoved the screwdriver under the car, and started cussing at it.

Yeahhhh, that's when I decided that I needed to change my tune -- clean up my act -- literally, and both idioms. I made a conscious effort to remove those words from my vocabulary, and to replace them with plain English words that said what I meant. I started aiming for more precise language.

Nine years later, I knew that I had been successful, when my now-eleven-year-old son was out in the garage working on a project. While hammering a nail, and unaware that anybody could hear him, he yelled loudly, "OUCH! I HIT MY THUMB!" Win.

Decades later, while lying in the Emergency Room, suffering from what was later diagnosed as pancreatitis, and howling from the pain, the strongest words I used were "WOW, THIS HURTS WORSE THAN ANYTHING I'VE EVER FELT!" and "HOLY MACKEREL, THIS HURTS!". Still winning.

Yeah, But There's Still Everybody Else

It's true. I'm not the only person in the world who makes a habit of clean speech. Unfortunately, for me it's still a conscious effort. I admire all of the people, for whom clean speech (or precise speech, if you prefer) is second nature, just a habit.

But then there's everybody else. I can recall a conversation recently, where half the words the speaker said, by actual count, were "fuck", "shit", or variations thereof. Not only could I not understand what he was trying to say, but I could not take the man seriously. I have heard many conversations like that.

Over the years, I have made many efforts to enjoy and appreciate contemporary music, hip-hop/R&B being one genre. But I cannot get past the profanity. It gets in the way.

Modern fiction literature, same thing. Political speeches, same thing. Popular movies, same thing. Way too many television shows, same thing. It's not necessary. It may be in there to pull a laugh out of the audience, or to sound sophisticated, but it doesn't work for me. In radio parlance, for me, it's a "tune-out".

So, What to Do About it?

Every one of those cusswords is a substitute for a perfectly good English-language word, and not a very good substitute at that. Why not just use the regular English words to get your message across? Instead of yelling, "That fuckin' fucker fucked up my shit again!", say, "That stupid clerk messed up my order again!" It's more accurate, and it's less likely to be misunderstood.

It really is that simple.

 If you want, go find a thesaurus and look up some stronger alternatives for "stupid". Could be useful in the future.

What about "Oh My Gawd" and Stuff Like That?

Ah, yes. Oaths and interjections.

Interjections are simple reactions to things. Today, they're mostly overreactions. And most of them merely sound stupid.

"Holy shit!"
"Fuuuuuuuck!"

"Dammmmmmmmn!"

"Oh my Gawwwwwd!"

"God damn it!"

(By the way, what's God got to do with it? Surely whatever just happened isn't His fault, is it? Leave Him out of it.)

Let's get Biblical here for a minute. Wait, wait, don't leave. This isn't a religious discussion. I'm just using the Good Book as a literary source. Again, don't get all excited. Geeze, you guys.

(See what I did there?)

In the Old Testament, in 2 Kings 6:31, is an intriguing phrase. Imagine the king, inspecting the city, then turning to his advisers, slashing his finger across his throat in the classic gesture, and saying "God do so to me, and more also, if ..."

That's an oath. Today, we might say, "God strike me dead if ..."

Or, "Cross my heart and hope to die."

Or, "If I'm lyin', I'm dyin'."

The most common oath today is the simple interjection, "Oh my god." It's used so often as to be practically meaningless. Nobody recognizes it in its original form as a prayer, an appeal to heaven. An oath.

Somewhere around 1981, a comedian commented on this subject, saying: "God's a busy guy. He's trying to solve world hunger and cancer and stuff, and every time somebody says 'Oh my God', He's like 'WHAT?!!! Whaddayawant? Can't you see I'm busy here?'"

And then there's the oath "What the hell is going on here?" or "What in God's name is going on here?" or, of course, "What the fuck is going on here?"  They're all oaths, that last one doing double duty as a profane oath.

So in the New Testament, Jesus says (paraphrasing) "Don't swear at all. Don't swear by heaven, and don't swear by the earth, and don't even swear by the hairs on your head. Because you don't have any power over heaven, or earth, or your hair." Well, Supercuts may disagree about the hair thing. But you get the idea.

(I guess he didn't like the tale of the Three Little Pigs. Because, by his definition, "Not by the hair of my chinny chin chin!" is an oath.)

Instead, he said "Let all your communication be, yea, yea; nay, nay." That doesn't mean that when you're mad at someone, you should call them a yea-yea-nay-nay. Nor does it mean that you should holler "yea yea nay nay" when you pound your thumb with a hammer. (Actually, if you did that, it might make you laugh, and that would be a good thing. But I digress ...) 

What he was saying was simply, "You don't need to use an oath to reinforce your words. Just say what you mean." 

Whether you like it or not, your speech defines who you are. Again in the New Testament, Jesus said, "Not that which goeth into the mouth defileth a man; but that which cometh out of the mouth, this defileth a man." Later, James wrote "Out of the same mouth proceedeth blessing and cursing. My brethren, these things ought not so to be."

That last paragraph goes far beyond profanity, and begins to address the subject of how we talk to each other, and how we talk about each other. That's another post for another time.

Okay, But What about Substitute Swear Words?

I will admit, this is a grey area. Substitute swear words are a sneaky way to get your point across without actually using profanity. Thus:

"Hell" becomes "heck".

"God" becomes "gosh".

"Pussy" becomes "sissy". Yes, that's right.

"Fuck" becomes "fudge" or "flip" or "frack" or one of many f-substitutes.

"Shit" becomes "shoot". 

Do I really need to list them all out for you?

One afternoon when I was in college (clearly before 1981), I stepped out of the Engineering Building and looked up at the sky. I said to myself, "Yikes. I'd better get across campus in a hurry. It looks like it could rain any second."

Another student stepped out behind me. He looked up at the sky, and said loudly, "Oh, my scrud."

Tch. Why didn't you just say the real thing?

I think it was George Carlin who called substitute words "chicken-shit cusswords." To address substitute cusswords, we could horribly mangle SWK's quote and say: "Substitute swear words are the chicken-shit effort of a feeble mind to express itself forcibly."

In Conclusion, Your Honour ...

It's got nothing to do with religion. It's got everything to do with precision of language. And, for better or for worse, it has everything to do with intelligence -- well, sounding intelligent. Clean up your language and say what you mean -- no more, and no less.

Just stop cussing, dammit.

Postscript: But What about Jodi?

Jodi is my best friend. Okay, she's one of my best friends. We have been best friends for a long time. She and I go way back, to long before 1981. I love her more than I can possibly put into words.

Jodi is a professional wordsmith. She has made good money as a writer and an editor. So she knows how to turn a phrase.

She is also the most eloquent and colorful cusser I have ever known. I have never heard anyone use profanity as adroitly, as skillfully, and to such deadly effect, as Jodi does. In direct contradiction to everything I have said here, Jodi's blue streaks are high art, and music to my ears. And I hope she never changes.