Give a word a bad name!

We did a recent column giving some examples of how words have changed their meaning over time. This week we shall devote some space to one little four-letter word. Before your read this column, let me say that the Gorls would never have used this word in polite company. That is all about to change after the enlightenment provided by this week’s YCBS.

I purposely did not use the word in the heading, because any reader with an urge to be outraged would have all the material required for righteous indignation. I won’t reveal the word until we get further down the page, lest my few remaining fans might slam this page shut and move on to something useful by Eamonn Brady.

The Lads use this word a lot. Come to think of it, if I had to wash my mouth out every time I uttered this four-letter, you could sterilise a baby’s bottle in it.

Before we print, what used to be a bad word until today, we need to admit that it has, over the centuries, fallen through the cracks into the basement of expletives and profanity. Profanity, swearing or cursing, involves the use of notionally offensive words for a variety of purposes. The word might be used to demonstrate disrespect, negativity, to ‘relieve’ pain, express strong emotion, or as a grammatical emphasis.

We have used the word ‘profanity’ to set the scene for you and get the children out of the room. The term ‘profanity’ is often used in a religious sense to refer to language that is blasphemous or sacrilegious. I don’t know if our highlighted word in today’s column is that severe – but it must be, because when I used it once in the school playground, I had to confess it to Fr Smith the following Friday. In a broader sense, profanity is often referred to as expletives, swearing, cursing, or foul language.

For any of you who are still with us after all that, the truth is that I am trying to delay the use of the word here for as long as I can – and it’s not easy. I don’t even know if this will get past the editor. Let me kill time by telling you an interesting little story in the meantime.

During the 16th and 17th centuries, everything for export had to be transported by ship. That was also long before the invention of 10-10-20, 0-7-30 – in fact there was no such thing as commercial or artificial fertiliser. During those times, it was quite common to ship out large amounts of, dung, to me, manure to those this four letter word is in danger of offending – when we finally get around to writing it.

The dung was shipped dry, because in dry form it weighed a lot less than when it was wet; however, we now have a problem on the ocean. Once the water, mostly seawater, hit the cargo out at sea, it of course got heavier again. But there were worse problems to follow at sea than the weight of the cleanings from the cowsheds. The process of fermentation started all over again. As those of you who went to school will be aware, a by-product of that occurrence is methane gas.

As this subject of our attention was stored below decks in big bundles… you know what is going to happen next – and it did happen. Methane began to build up below deck and the first seaman to venture down there with a lantern… I was going to say something smart like the stuff hit the fan – but you may not be ready for that yet. Several ships were destroyed and crews lost in that manner before it was eventually determined just what was happening.

As soon as the problem was highlighted, the storing of the manure below deck was forbidden. The same huge bundles of manure were now always stamped with the instructions; ‘STOW HIGH IN TRANSIT’. Sailors then knew to stack the piles high enough off the lower decks so that any water that came into the hold would not touch the volatile cargo and start the production of methane.

‘STOW HIGH IN TRANSIT’ was naturally abbreviated (ah, I see a few hands up at the back!) to S.H.I.T.! So, you see, dear reader; the word shit is not really a bad word at all. It has come down through the centuries and covers a lot of ground today (nice pun, Bernie)

A man said to a friend of mine on the street one day, about this column; ‘Sure anybody could write that sort of shit’. I just hope I haven’t landed myself in it with this piece!

Don’t Forget

Many a man thinks he has become famous when he merely happened to meet an editor who was hard-up for material.