Opus 2023-148: Word Power

We are being dragged down by a lack of imagination.

What is on my mind right now is the omnipresence of four letter words.  They have lost their shock value.  They never were really that funny.  The talking classes can’t seem to get beyond them.

I had a German teacher who attacked the problem by teaching us a good German word for cussing:  Kartofelvonkucken.  Granted, it had more than four letters, but if you say it with commitment it can sound very powerful.  With nods to my misspelling of the word, what it means is “potato pancakes.”

As a teacher I was a bit constrained in what I said but I still had moments.  I remember I always tried to find original ways to express my frustration.  I would at times get angry enough to say to the class, “Shut the expletive deleted up.”  Another one I used to use was defecation database.  I also would remind people when they apologized that the word they had used was not French but Anglo-Saxon.

The text books in middle school were in a steady decline as far as vocabulary goes.  I see the same process taking place in church.  Words that any 8th grader would know are often beyond the grasp of the teachers that are supposed to be setting the example.  We should be working to expand the variety available instead of dumbing everything down.

Become a paragon of perspicacity.

homo unius libri