As my father rolls over and over in his grave, mortified, and gravely concerned,  posthumously (sorry for the death-puns, but he would have appreciated them) about curse words becoming part of mainstream, everyday speech, I offer up this silly haiku (senryu actually), with his voice still echoing inside my head.  My father never cursed, and hated the idea of a “changing language” that would acknowledge, accept and induct new words, and allow curse words to become acceptable, simply by their use (abuse?) becoming commonplace.  My mother (a German import) LOVED to curse – the S-word (notice how that makes the word “sword” and she did use it in a cutting, incisive manner!) especially – much to my father’s chagrin and anger.  There was heated debate at times, though my father mellowed with age, and eventually gave up trying to get my mother to stop her cursing ways…  🙂

Anyway, I posted recently on Facebook a link to a Huff Post article entitled, “A F*cking Short History of the F-word”, which garnered some funny and appreciative responses from my friends and family.  I wrote this little haiku at the time, and posted it here a few days later, BUT when I went looking for the link to the Huff Post article among my Facebook posts, I discovered it had been DELETED by (I assume) the little “decency elves” over at Facebook HQ!

So, with a smirk on my face, in honor of my proper father, and cursing mother, I offer up these links for your review, edification, and enjoyment, on the topic of the “F-word”, its roots, and etymology:

1. The Huff Post article (mentioned above as inspiration for this haiku/senryu) by Melissa Mohr, author of “Holy Sh*t: A Brief History of Swearing”
2. The About.com “Urban Legends” post page, with notes about true and false “legendary” and mythical sources of the F-word…
3. Scientific American – funny article entitled, “Why the #$%! Do We Swear?” (hint – it’s to relieve pain?)…

Well, as you can imagine, there are many more pages, posts and links out there – these were just three of my faves…  🙂

So enjoy your self out there, choose your curse words – and forum(s) for speaking them out loud – carefully, and communicate thoughtfully, in whatever changing language you use, and call “home”…  🙂

 – the Haikook

24 Feb This entry was published on 2014/02/24 at 12:07 am. It’s filed under Haiku, History, Language+Culture, Words+Writing and tagged changing, common, curse, curses, cursing, etymology, f-word, four-letter-word, fuck, Haiku, haikugrams, haikumages, history, language, poem, poetry. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.