Re: Profane?

At 1:11 am -0500 17/6/01, Danny Wier wrote:
>From: Patrick Jarrett
>
>| What defines a word to be profane? In what point does a language and its
>people accept the word to be a profanity and not just a word? Why and how do
>people start new ones as a slang term?
>|
>| Just something I have been pondering and wanted my colleagues opinions.
>
>The general process of how a word becomes "vulgar" (a taboo word is pretty
>much
>the same thing): the "dirty word" was usually a "legitimate" word, and
>political
>correctness demands a softer, gentler euphemism.  Like how we went from Old
>English _scitan_ to Modern English "go potty"...
On this side of the pond, "go potty" means "to become soft in the head,
become mad".

Obviously "He went potty in the bathroom" has quite different meanings each
side of the pond ;)




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A mind which thinks at its own expense
will always interfere with language.
                   [J.G. Hamann 1760]
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