{"id":679,"date":"2012-11-04T10:02:47","date_gmt":"2012-11-03T21:02:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/?p=679"},"modified":"2012-11-04T10:02:47","modified_gmt":"2012-11-03T21:02:47","slug":"oh-no-more-b-asterisks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/?p=679","title":{"rendered":"Oh, no! More b***** asterisks"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>For at least the past 250 years, the English language has had a handful of words which are not considered appropriate for use in polite company.\u00a0 Vulgar is a term that dictionaries sometimes use to describe these words.\u00a0 Coarse is another.\u00a0 And there are even a few words that dictionaries describe as \u2018highly taboo\u2019.<\/p>\n

Interestingly, with the exception of one or two recently coined compound words, none of these words started out as \u2018vulgar\u2019 or \u2018highly taboo\u2019.\u00a0 They started out as pretty ordinary \u2013 and useful \u2013 nouns and verbs.\u00a0 But then, for some reason, they found their way onto the \u2018naughty\u2019 list.<\/p>\n

Of course, people at both ends of the social scale continued to use the naughty words, but, throughout the 18th, 19th and much of the 20th century, it was unusual to see them in print.<\/p>\n

As recently as ten years ago, a newspaper to which I occasionally contributed had a list of about a dozen words that were absolutely forbidden.\u00a0 It also had another list \u2013 of about 30 words \u2013 that were \u2018to be avoided wherever possible\u2019.\u00a0 And where (in the interests of journalistic integrity) it was not possible to avoid one or more of them, \u2018the judicious use of asterisks\u2019 was recommended.<\/p>\n

And so the accused was alleged to have called the shopkeeper an a***hole.\u00a0 And Councillor X said that The Mayor was talking bulls**t.\u00a0 Of course, despite the asterisks, the journal\u2019s readers \u2013 even the journal\u2019s most sensitive<\/em> readers \u2013 were in absolutely no doubt what the accused and Councillor X had actually said.\u00a0 If anything, the asterisks simply drew added attention to the so-called vulgar words.<\/p>\n

Recently, I have noticed that Readers\u2019 Comments in online versions of some of the major newspapers are increasingly peppered with asterisks.\u00a0 \u2018The world is a mess because of greedy b******* like you,\u2019 for example.\u00a0 And \u2026 \u2018You guys just don\u2019t give sh*t do you.\u2019<\/p>\n

If you feel happy calling the columnist a greedy bastard, then do so.\u00a0 If you don\u2019t, then don\u2019t.\u00a0 But enough with the asterisks.\u00a0 They are doing my head in.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For at least the past 250 years, the English language has had a handful of words which are not considered appropriate for use in polite company.\u00a0 Vulgar is a term that dictionaries sometimes use to describe these words.\u00a0 Coarse is … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3,6,4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/679"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=679"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/679\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":680,"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/679\/revisions\/680"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=679"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=679"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=679"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}