Re: USAGE: Dirty words (was: USAGE: Re: Dutch v or f)

Jan van Steenbergen scripsit:

> I'm not even advocating pornography as such. But I sincerily believe that
> someone who claims to be a translator just needs to know such things. And the
> moralistic attitude of most dictionaries, expressed by the complete omission of
> this kind of slang, has always irritated me; if I want to be moralized, then I'll
> certainly go a priest or so.
It's worse than that.  The major English dictionaries do not (or did not)
even define the perfectly decorous term "sexual intercourse", whose meaning
cannot be deduced from its parts; or else they do so in blatantly
circular ways, usually involving the word "coitus".  So it's not just
the *words* they seem to have a problem with, but the concepts
themselves.

--
John Cowan <jcowan@...>     http://www.reutershealth.com
I amar prestar aen, han mathon ne nen,    http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
han mathon ne chae, a han noston ne 'wilith.  --Galadriel, _LOTR:FOTR_

Reply