It reminds me a bit of the Jewish prohibition of uttering or writing "G-d", and all the euphemisms and circumlocutions this has led to for 4,000 years.
I don't get this one, because I thought "God" WAS the euphemism, for Jehovah or Jhwh?
I don't get this one, because I thought "God" WAS the euphemism, for Jehovah or Jhwh?
You can't say or write "God," so sometimes it is written "G-d," or changed to "Adonai" which means "Oh, Lord," or "Hashem," which means "the name." I.e. the name which cannot be pronounced. I've never quite understood how Jehova and Jhwh work.
Twat is OK because it was used by Robert Browning in a famous poem. He thought it meant something else, and people back then were too embarrassed to correct him.
I guess maybe it's not a word used much in the US, so doesn't trigger the rude words filter. In the same sort of way, 'fanny pack' doesn't sound half as rude to USians as it does to British people.
Around the same age, a group of us were showing off our best words of power in a friend's garden.... his dad appeared without warning and we all feared the worst. The dad looked at us all and mutteredI remember running into our house aged about 9 or 10 and running up the stairs full of beans shouting c**t b*****d f**k. My father appeared at the top of the stairs, looked at me and said absolutely nothing. Had it been my mother, it would have been a week’s penance.
Like 'Smeg' and 'Smeghead'?^ Yes. No major power - other than endowed on it by virtue of it being a 'restricted' / taboo word. If you took that away, it would lose its shock value, and then we'd all have to move on to using something else.
Always amused me btw that naff as in 'Naff off Fletcher' was introduced in Porridge to give them something abusive to say (as prisoners would) that wouldn't offend the censors
I guess maybe it's not a word used much in the US, so doesn't trigger the rude words filter.