Words Are Funny

I've long had a fascination with words. It's a personality trait I can trace back to when I was young, specifically after having watched an old Gallagher sketch. Yes, the comedian who's most famous for smashing perfectly good watermelons and various other forms of produce with a giant mallet. He, rather eloquently (he has a degree in chemical engineering, believe it or not), discussed the oddities of the English language and how baffling the variances in annunciation of similarly spelled words can be. Comb, tomb, and bomb, for example - even words as simple as do and go are totally different in terms of phonetics. When you boil it down, the fact of the matter is that the English language is just plain weird but so too are the kinds of words we use to express ourselves and the connotations society applies to them.

The concept of curse words and vulgarities amuses me. You know the words I'm talking about - the ones that TV censors have conniption fits over. Who came up with these words to begin with? Was it their purpose to make something obscene, and if it wasn't who decided these words were "cursed"? Why is it that we try to keep children from hearing these words altogether instead of  telling them about the importance of recognizing conversational context?

Case in point, lets take a look at three words (PARENTAL ADVISORY - salty language ahead!) we use as slang for feces: Poop, crap, and shit. Why were these words developed? I have no idea, I can only assume feces was too proper; rebellion seems to be as good a motivator as any when it comes to this sort of thing. Poop is definitely the least demonized of those in terms of its societal impact. It's a word that is welcome around children. It has a jovial, comedic sense to it. You can say poop in front of your Grandma and she'll probably laugh at how silly you are. Crap steps things up a notch. Suddenly we've moved away from using a word that's just interchangeable with feces to one that can imply the conditions of a given scenario. "How'd this dog crap get on my shoe?" and "Crap, I forgot my homework!" are both justifiable uses of the word. From an audible standpoint, crap sounds bad. If you use crap while talking to your Mom, she might start to wonder about the kind of people you're hanging out with. The worst one of all when it comes to fecal slang is shit. When I was a kid, being caught saying that within earshot of a teacher would earn you a date with the paddle which is ironic because some of those teachers would literally beat the shit out of you. That made for a shitty day, needless to say.

I'd love to know how shit came to exist, as a word I mean. I'm up to speed on bodily functions; I took a biology class in college after all. I imagine two chaps from merry old England, drunk and on their way home from the pub, when one of them trips and falls into a pile of horse manure (which is entirely plausible because they didn't have cars back then, you know), and the rest is history. I imagine all the other vulgarities common to our culture have similar stories behind them. That's the sort of thing that needs to be documented, in my mind, if for no other reason than shits and giggles.

From a Biblical standpoint (talk about changing gears - this is a bit like going from reverse to third without so much as braking), there are plenty of passages which convey a message that moral individuals and Christ-followers should abstain from using such language. (I know most folks are their own moral compass these days but in the realm of humanity, the Bible is the foundation of this world's sense of morality and it bears including in this discussion.) In Ephesians 5:4, the apostle Paul writes "Let there be no filthiness nor foolish talk nor crude joking..." That's about as straightforward as could be, in my opinion. However, it begs the question: What defines an element of language as being filthy, foolish or crude? I don't know who gets to make that decision, quite frankly, but I think it's fair to say that they've had their hands full over the years. One thing us humans seem to be exceedingly skilled at is coming up with new ways of defiling ourselves, be it through actions, opinions or anything in between.

This blog entry isn't just about why foul language is foul, it's about how seemingly random words come to prominence as part of our everyday vernacular. Here are two words which I've noticed have gotten a lot of usage lately.

Premiere - By definition, premiere refers to the first artistic performance of theatrical, musical or other cultural presentations. "There's a movie premiere tomorrow", "Lion King is premiering on Broadway next week", and "Metallica will premiere their new album later this year" are all valid uses of the word.

Be that as it may, premiere has taken on the connotation of representing the quality of a product or service. When used in that context, premiere isn't an indication of a debut so much as it is a marketing tool to say "We're awesome!" Case in point, last year there were billboard ads around our neck of the woods for a local bank touting their loan department and two employees making up said division both of whom were pictured on the billboards, dressed nicely and standing in front of a topiary. "Orangeburg's Premiere Lenders", the sign read, an obvious effort at promoting the quality of work they are capable of producing. This was particularly amusing to me because the paperwork for our mortgage was handled by this same bank and we had worked with one of the individuals pictured on the ad. We had to come into the bank 4 times to sign off on affidavits regarding corrections because that "premiere lender" botched the paperwork.

Premium - The only usage of this word people see for the most part is premium-grade gasoline but it's not a consistent product descriptor with the petroleum industry anymore seeing as how various vendors may tag that same octane as "super" or "plus". It all depends on whether you're gassing up at a BP, Exxon, or what have you.

McDonald's uses "premium" in a lot of their advertising, but they've gone so far as to copyright the term for what's known as the McDonald's Premium line. (Seriously, this is the kind of thing you learn by doing research for your blog.) Any time they feel like they've put together an especially worthwhile sandwich or beverage, they're likely to tag it with the "Premium" prefix, as is the case with the new Premium McWraps. Is the food worthy of being called premium? I couldn't tell you because I haven't eaten anything other than a sausage biscuit from there in years. I guess the Premium line is too good for my beloved sausage, egg & cheese.

What I get such a kick out of with words like this (as well as words like best, greatest, etc.) is that they are ultimately gimmicks - shiny titles emblazoned with neon and pretty lights, used in absolutely unquantifiable statements. There's no way of measuring what they're promoting as having been measured, in other words. It's one of the cheapest methods of promotion imaginable and it's a little offensive to me. Why? Because it's advertising that assumes the audience isn't smart enough to make a logical conclusion on their own. That's the way of all media and state-sponsored education, though. "Now you be a good little consumer - trust us and go buy what we tell you to!", they seem to say.

This is a discussion, like a lot of observations I make, which isn't going to make any kind of a difference to the world. It's really just about me taking the time to point out something that strikes me as being too absurd not to talk about. I know other people see the sort of things that I recognize but I guess I've spent so much time in my life looking for ulterior motives that reading between the lines of something like words, their usage, and meanings only comes natural. I'd hope at the very least that if you're reading this you'd question what's going on the next time you see a word that looks out of place or like it's being taken advantage of in how it's being manipulated. Words can't protect themselves, after all, so someone needs to look out for them.