CSotD: PG – harsh language
Skip to comments
xkcd is the kind of strip where I'm perfectly willing to believe they did the research for this, though I'm a little surprised that "Kafkaesque" isn't more frequently modified, since it's a favorite adjective of people who have read little, if any, Kafka, and tends to be thrown around about as indiscriminately as either of those intensifiers.
I have no idea how much I swear anymore, since I now work at home. When I was in an office, there were moments when I'd get a reaction, but it was mostly in the form of snorts and giggles because it was never aimed at anyone, or at least, never at anyone who was present. I tend (I was told) to save my worst for when I'm talking to myself, or, more accurately, to my computer.
Which makes me think that I'm probably doing a pretty good job of peeling the wallpaper at the moment because I'm in the middle of shifting layout software from Quark to InDesign and, while it's not a huge transition, there are plenty of moments when I hit the key for a simple function and something entirely other happens instead because, while that's how I've been doing it for the last 12 years, it's not the right keystroke in this new software. I'm sure I've been channeling Eddie Izzard pretty constantly for the past week.
Incidentally, the second adjective in their list brings up an interesting question, which is the country of origin for the usage. I was in an Irish ballad group for a few years and it took a little while before I realized that the minor vulgarity we use for "angry" is used in Ireland to mean "drunk." So we'd be sitting around talking and our whistle player would be telling a story and he'd say, "I was coming home from this dance, and I was really pissed …" and I'd wonder why he got angry at the dance, since it didn't really explain why he and his bicycle ended up in the ditch.
When they do the follow-up study in ten years, I hope they will break it out into the two separate usages, so we'll know whether someone who was fucking pissed, or possibly pissed as shit, was stumbling around or simply grinding his teeth.
After all, language matters!
Comments 4
Comments are closed.