What's with all the potty mouths? Effing cut it out, I say!

The time has come, dear readers, to offer some random thoughts about the currently ubiquitous use and misuse of ‘that word.’ OK, out in the open and no point in beating about the bush, as Ebenezer Scrooge said, the word is Fuck. But, now I’ll wimp out and be discreet and offer the kindly euphemism utilized by Lynn Truss in her informative and entertaining polemic on the state of the contemporary world, Talk to the Hand, and opt for Eff, or Effing.

The point is, the word has been used and misused to the extent it is being rendered meaningless, not to mention lamebrained. Not that I am averse to using it at times of stress or anger, but often think that the word is best applied, and should be reserved for sexual situations in which, quite frankly, no other word will ‘do’ as well. But, that’s a whole other matter.

Walking down the street I pass a little coterie of otherwise respectable looking girls of 13 or 14 years, or so. And I overhear them – I couldn’t help but overhear them. People at the end of the block, including the guy operating the jackhammer, could overhear them.

“So, I’m like I’m not effing doing that.”
“No effing way.”
“It’s effing true. So, I'm like go and eff yourself.”
“What a effing asshole. Eff!”

I was, quite frankly, shocked. Do you kiss your Moms with mouths like that? Have you no shame! Do you realize what you sound like? And so on, and so forth. And remember, I don't shock too easily. After all, I used to work with junkies and some of them would have had no vocabulary whatsoever if that word hadn't been available. And, I certainly used it myself when I worked with them, because it made them feel less alienated.

But, the patter of these little girls put a different spin on the issue. I remember a linguistics class in my long ago university days when one of our exercises involved analyzing the use of language in literary works. One of the young women in the class chose a particularly lurid and erotic passage from Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover. Before she began she apologized and made mention of the fact the passage she would be reading did have the ‘F’ word in it – used in sexual context, I might add, and not as a profanity. She then read the passage, this nice and scholarly young woman did. The rest of the class shuffled just a tiny bit, uncomfortable at her blue utterances, even if it was in the name of scholasticism.

My point being that at the time, polite young ladies did not use that word, except in the throes of passion, at which times it had significant impact. Guys used it, even then. We used it sitting around the pub, or working in a sawmill in a summer job. It was a kind of ‘guy’ thing. But, we then tended to watch our language around females. In front of our Moms! There are not enough degrees in the hell that we would be sent to at the end of our days if we ever said eff around our moms.

Now, of course, elementary school kids tell teachers (and likely their moms) to eff off.

And that is ultimately my point. Aside from the shudder inducing distaste that arises when hearing the word blithely bandied about in public, there is the linguistic fact that a perfectly good word (in context) has been defused and is rapidly losing its impact. That’s too bad. Within a decade I predict eff (in its non-euphemized form) will join ‘bloody’ in being a neutral term. Bloody, I might add, was once considered a blasphemous and somewhat shocking term, which is why we have such euphemisms as ‘ruddy’ or ‘bleeding’.

So, if we want to preserve ‘fuck’ (there, I said it again, just to conclude) in its purity of linguistic impact, we effing well have to stop using it so blithely. Such a step would also make public discourse sound just a little less moronic and abrasive.