[Jimbee (OP)]

I got my first modern dictionary around 25 years ago. Up till then the dictionaries we had in the house tended to be old. But it was interesting in that it had four-lettered words in it. And I found it interesting that swear, or four-lettered, words were just classified as "Vulgar" in it.

Actually most or all four-lettered words were just acceptable words at one time. I already did a post here once on the S-word. It seems some words just become less and less acceptable over time, until they become swear words. The example I read about and shared here once is snot, meaning mucous of course. I read some people claim it is slowly becoming less socially acceptable to use in ordinary speech. Now, the F-word was almost always taboo of course. But the point is, to determine whether a word is standard, or correct, English, you have to get into the history of it first. For example as I brought up elsewhere online, ain't is the correct contraction of "am not". In all other uses it is nonstandard (for example "ain't she sweet"). The only question is, are contractions standard speech? (I know they are colloquial. But I recently read sometimes colloquialisms are slang and sometimes they are just informal words.)

So what are the four or five famous four-lettered words people sometimes use? Are they correct English, just offensive to be used in public? Or are they some other category of English?

[Jimbee (OP)]

I also wanted to ask while I remember. As you can see, this thread is more a thread about what is standard and nonstandard than anything else. And I was wondering about ain't and contractions, whether they are standard, too. So I'll put that all here in this thread.

But, I am confused if contractions are standard or nonstandard. Because I thought colloquial speech was just another category of speech. But I read recently actually sometimes colloquial speech is slang, but used in some formal ways. And sometimes it is standard, but less formal. I know contractions have to be sometimes standard, because there are two times you just can't avoid them. One is the possessive case. I read in a book of trivia once that the possessive "-'s" was once "-es". So that would be an obvious contraction. But I guess some might say it really doesn't stand for "-es" anymore. Also, o'clock. O'clock stands for "of clock". When you say it is three o'clock you are really saying it is three of clock. Isn't that a standard use of a contraction?

[Bored chemist]

Let's see if I can answer this and remain polite.

There's an old word meaning "strike" or something like that and it has become a pretty much archetypal 4 letter word which i can misspell to avoid offence.

So, here's an old joke.
What has 200 balls and forks rabbits?
A shotgun.

OK, in that case the word forks is just a simple verb. The humour arises from it having two different meanings

In the absence of said artillery, rabbits are known to fork like rabbits.
Again, that's a different use, but it's just a verb

It's fair to assume that the rabbits enjoy a good fork.
That's a noun- I think it's a verb pretending to be a noun.
You could also say they like a good forking and that's the use of a verb as a noun- as close as English gets to a gerund.
There are other examples- a meeting- where the present participle of the verb is used as a noun meaning an instance of the verb.


But there are also cases where the word is used much less literally.
If someone claims they "tripped over the forking pet rabbit", that's logically impossible because the rabbit is in the singular.
It takes two to fork.

Their exclamation "Oh Forkety forking fork! Fork the forky forker!" as they fell and hit their head contains plenty of different grammatical forms of the word.
But none of them is being used in its "technical" sense.
So it hardly makes sense to classify them as a verb, adjective or whatever.

[alancalverd]

When you say it is three o'clock you are really saying it is three of clock.

Not quite. It's a contraction of "three of THE clock". If you use a different timekeeper, you'd use a different phrase such as "six bells of the middle watch" (actually 0300L according to your sextant), "an hour before high tide", or "milking time" depending on what mattered to you and your livestock.  Thanks to Brunel and the Great Western Railway, most people now use clocks and eventually everyone will use Zulu time, so "0300Z" means exactly the same everywhere.

[alancalverd]

As for swear words, dictionaries use the term "expletive" for a word or a phrase uttered in anger or astonishment with no regard to its origin or meaning.

My favorite dictionaryism is "ecclesiastical expletive"  such as "oh my god".

[Jimbee (OP)]

Yes, thank you all very much. I think you answered my questions and I think this is the last I'll post on this one. As you know I find words fascinating. Their history and just the science of linguistics in general.

I also wanted to just say quickly. You know I really don't get British humor sometimes. Are most of you from the UK? I don't think most Americans would. You know to understand humor you really have to be from that country and part of that culture. Like if I someone asked me a question and I said "Well, why did the chicken cross the road?" You see the important thing with that joke is not the joke itself. It's the fact that joke is a very old joke and a cliche. If I answered a question with "why did the chicken cross the road" my answer would have nothing to do with chickens, or crossing streets or even roads. My point would be that the question was cliche, or the person was being cliche asking it. Just to use one example of what I am talking about. I'm just thinking out loud. But that's true.
 
I have to figure out the correct sections of this forum to use too. I usually first try to find the correct section. And if nothing seems to fit, I put it in Just Chat usually then.

[Jimbee (OP)]

I wanted to make a note on jokes and culture. (I might as well put it here. But as I said I think this is the last thing I'll post here.) Cultures have very different ideas about what is funny, and really even what are appropriate and inappropriate jokes.

For example in the 80s they were talking about necrophilia and cannibal jokes in the media. And someone pointed out, if you like those kinds of jokes it doesn't mean anything odd. Laughter is often just a way of distancing yourself from your problems. For example I read, joke about the handicapped (which I think we all agree are always inappropriate) are usually the type of jokes that someone who is young and carefree, might enjoy (I forget exactly why). But they never have anything against those people of course.

Also on the subject of UK humor. They were talking about US movies and television from the US that they were watching there in the 80s. And they said that people living in the UK found our TV and movies way too violent. And they were right, it sometimes is. But they pointed out ironically that people in the UK tend to like jokes involving violence more. Which as I just pointed out, really doesn't mean anything. I also once or twice saw someone here post a joke or joke that in the US where I live would seem to be racist or bordering on racist. I won't go into detail. But like I said, when I saw it I just assumed it wasn't what I thought it was. And the problem was I just don't understand other culture's humor. I think everyone worldwide has that problem.

As long as I am posting in this thread probably for the last time, I might as well also point out that I understand what Bored chemist meant about the word "strike" and how it relates to the origin of that one word. I was researching it and other words like that, along with the history of them, around the early 90s. And like I said, it's a topic I find interesting. It's often overlooked in the science of linguistics and history. So maybe I'll just research it more on my own, like I said.