Four Letter Words

There are a lot of four letter words in the English language, and probably some other languages, too (though 'merde' is five, 'sheiße' even as many as six letters ) but those are languages I don't know a damn thing about. Anyways, these English four letter words are the basis of the system of general invective. As you might know, or at least expect, pretty much all of these words are overused. Some stem from blasphemy but most are sure-fire ancient solutions that were first invoked to construct Stonehenge.

Words like shit, damn, hell, fuck, dick, cunt, toes, jizz, piss, jism, and the incomparable tits are as old as druids or speculative astrology. It's true that they were used also to frighten Roman invaders, who then adopted them into their own perverse systems. Anyways, English has a number, I probably missed a few because I'm not as vulgar as I could be. 'Goof' for instance is a particularly strong word in general, and unforgivable in some society. (My only back-up phrase for that caesura was: certain circles - I don't even really like alliteration and that I couldn't escape it there scares me.)

Damn that word. It is probably the worst word around. People blame it for all kinds of misery and strife and crises. It's a genuinely bad word and conjures up images of crying families, crippled men drunk in gutters, and racing cars in 1930s dustbowls. I don't even really want to state this frig of a word. It's dumb.

But I suppose it explains certain things – certain hang-ups or neurotic behaviors. It's a word everybody knows, too. You may even be thinking of it. Like I said it starts with a D and the rest of it is ubiquitous, overused, and the definition of a curse or hex.

(Also I hereby coin the term lexiconoclast, or the intentional perversion or misuse of a word  for the express purpose of drawing out and frustrating pedants; "That one was a lexiconoclast, just to see if the professor was just an inflexible, hidebound pedant." or "Did you see Frank's face when I dropped that lexiconoclasm? What a tightwad." et cetera)