I had an interesting new experience the other day: I posted a message on this forum and when I previewed it I found that a word had been replaced with asterisks. Never happened to me before. It was a well known 8-letter word referring to bovine excrement - fairly harmless, I thought. However, I modified it before submitting the post. The second version, containing six of the original letters and two asterisks, was still perfectly recognisable but it got through.
The status of "improper" words is strange ; everyone knows them and knows what they mean, and yet some are just on the wrong side of the line. It reminded me of a conversation with my (then very young) son, who said:
"Dad, you know there are some words that you're not supposed to say?"
I admitted that I knew.
"Well," he said, "is it all right if I make up my own word that I can use when I'm cross?"
I said I thought that might be acceptable.
"OK," he said, "how about fubluck ?"
Oddly enough I never afterwards heard him use the word in anger. I think he was content just to know that it was available.
Anyway, just for fun I'm going to post this and see if it produces any more of those fublucking asterisks.
The status of "improper" words is strange ; everyone knows them and knows what they mean, and yet some are just on the wrong side of the line. It reminded me of a conversation with my (then very young) son, who said:
"Dad, you know there are some words that you're not supposed to say?"
I admitted that I knew.
"Well," he said, "is it all right if I make up my own word that I can use when I'm cross?"
I said I thought that might be acceptable.
"OK," he said, "how about fubluck ?"
Oddly enough I never afterwards heard him use the word in anger. I think he was content just to know that it was available.
Anyway, just for fun I'm going to post this and see if it produces any more of those fublucking asterisks.
