Bad Words: Part Three

NOTE: For those of you at home (under the age of David), you may want to read this one quitly to yourself thus avoiding a possible bar-of-soap in the mouth.



PUKE (Synonyms: Barf, Upchuck, Hurl, Toss-the-cookies, Ride the Porcelain Bus, Blow Chunks, Burpin' Solid, Yack, Heave, Ralph (one of my personal favorites), Spew, Liquid Giggles, Disgorge)

As you can see, there are many ways of expressing the act of expelling ones slightly digested food. How Mom settled on one term, and why she limited our vocabulary to that term is far from clear. Let's examine, or digest if you will, the term "throw up".

First of all, "throw up" doesn't begin to describe what it is or what it feels looks or smells like. You could also use the same phrase in different contexts which creates confusion: ("Ben, can you throw up a carrot, some string, and a crutch?"). Using the word Puke, on the other hand, would have been so much more helpful and descriptive (the word Ralph, though occasionally being confused with a person or maybe a movie staring John Goodman, would be even better). Puke just sounds gross, it sounds like it would all of a sudden rack your body causing convulsions and expel itself. Not to mention the fact that words like Yack, Puke, and Barf have all been coined for one purpose, they are not sterile phrases conceived by non-offensive, non-imaginative (and probably French) women, but rather words created for the soul purpose of describing vomit (which is also a good word).

Puke, Barf, Upchuck, Hurl, Ralph, Disgorge, Earl, Cough cubes, Giggle chunks, Gargling gravy, Liberate your lunch, Liquid laughter, Paint the wall, Retch, Regurgitate, Solid scream, Bark'n up breakfast, Commode hugging, Giggle to Ralph over the porcelain intercom, Sing lunch, Technicolor yodel, Yell down the porcelain manhole, Toss a tiger, & Park the Buick. There, got it all out of my system.

Bad Words: Part Two

NOTE: For those of you at home (under the age of David), you may want to read this one quitly to yourself thus avoiding a possible bar-of-soap in the mouth.



NERD (Definition: A person with limited social, but advanced technological skills and interests)

Even though calling someone a "Nerd" is not necessarily an insult, we were certainly not allowed to do so as children (Mom may contest that we are still not allowed). It's funny how calling someone a name, especially one that is only defined by the intention by which it is called, can produce such pain. For some reason, it really hurt to be called a nerd, or even to be called "dummy fummy". I mean really, who tarewles?

Due to the restrictions (and harsh enforcement) on using the word, we often cleverly called each other "dren", which as I'm sure our astute readers realize is simply the inverse of the word nerd. This tactic worked less well with names like "dork" and "idiot" simply because the inverse is very difficult to say (especially if you already have a speach impediment).

Bad Words: Part One

NOTE: For those of you at home (under the age of David), you may want to read this one quitly to yourself thus avoiding a possible bar-of-soap in the mouth.



BUTT (root: buttocks, the fleshy part of the human body that you sit on)

When we were kids there were certain words that we were not allowed to use. It is interesting to think back on what some of these words were. For the life of me I can't figure out what's wrong with the word butt. If we had known to, we could probably have used the word 'buttocks', but for whatever reason, shortening that to just 'butt' was unacceptable.

Granted, the context was more than likely attached to the word 'head', thus creating one of the most clever insults in human history. To claim that a brother's head was in fact a butt would have been as painfully insulting as kicking him in the... neck.

One of my favorite games to play (when I got old enough to forgo getting my mouth washed out with soap) was to trick Mom into saying some 'bad word' and then repeat that word over-and-over, claiming "Mom said it, it must be okay!" This was most fun when, somehow, it coincided with watching Dr. Quinn.