Re: CHAT: Swearing // was CHAT: Murgatroyd

In a message dated 06/29/2002 06.28.36 PM, Adrian (morg0072@FLINDERS.EDU.AU)
writes:

>I also wonder whether specific words have the same connotations to
>other people that they do to me, particularly internationally. Every
>swear word has its particular emotive attachment - I would list them
>as follows:
>
>"shit" - misfortune/disappointment
    shit (or "merde"... I cuss in lousy French at times) = more a
brainstunned sense of "[WoW - or -Uh Oh] I didn't expect THAT!" or "Crikey! I
don't bleedin' frikkin' believe THIS!" - both of these are in a more emphatic
sense of "C'est le vie..." (life being _subjectively_ "fulla beautiful shit,
good shit, bad shit, undifferentiated shit and just plain ugly, nasty
shit"... and then - of course - there is shit as "blinkin' stuff too much to
list/mention", shit as "excessive refuse, trash" and shit as ... shit... ;)
    ... an all-purpose swear word I guess...

>"bloody" - anger/frustration
    Well for me "bloody" and variations thereon are just "emphasizers" and
"intensifiers" (see brief example above)

>"fuck" - contempt
    Just a notch or two above "shit" as well as various derivatives as needed
for terms of utter contempt or shock (i.e. "Oh fuck!"). On rare occasions of
complete existential despair or demoralization [a la the Judeo-Christian
character Job], I even address my panentheistic Higher Power(s) as "Hey you
M-th-r-f-ck-er..." while shakin' my boney arms at everything in existence ;)

Hanuman Zhang
---------------------______________

"Excess is excrement. Excrement retained in the body is poison." - Ursula K.
Le Guin

"O wise humanity, terribly wise humanity! Of thee I sing. How inscrutable is
the civilization where men toil and work and worry their hair gray to get a
living and forget to play!" - Lin Yutang, _The Importance of Living_

"The phrase 'the cost of living' is a not-so-subtle threat that life itself
can be For Sale to the highest bidder ... that living without dreams is
'realistic' and that dying in the gutter may be 'cheap'." - Yuri Mayakovskii