Well, Sh**t, I Dropped the Noodles on the Floor

One of the things that always puzzled me when I was a kid was that there were words that were “not to be said.” In my family, there was a familiar series of reasons why we were not to use certain words, but beyond that, I knew that the phenomenon was general even if the reasons varied from one family to another.

It seemed more reasonable to me that things were “bad,” rather than words. Body parts or body functions that had to do with sexual practices or excretory functions, for example, could be “bad.” I was OK with that. What confused me was that anus, for instance, was a good word, while asshole was a bad word. It was the words, apparently, not the things. How odd.

I’ve thought about this from time to time since then and as I now see it, we imagine a word scale that goes from -1 through 0 (neutral) to +1. These vary, as I pointed out in my post “Conservative and Proud,” from one setting to another. Asshole could be a -1 word in one setting and a +1 word in another. I get that. But what about that zero? What is that?

This brings us to the question of euphemisms and dysphemisms and that brings me to George Carlin. Shit is a word Carlin loves to say. As I let my mind wander back over the years of Carlin I enjoyed with my kids, I remember uses of shit as a noun (pot, mostly), a verb, an adjective, and an adverb. How he missed conjunctions and prepositions, I can’t imagine.

Here’s Carlin on saying and hearing the word “shit.”

Shit's a nice word. It's a friendly, happy, y'know, kind of word. Handy word. Middle class has never really been into ****, y'know, as a word.No, not really comfortable.Not completely into it. Y'know, not really relaxed with it. You'll hear it around the kitchen if someone drops a casserole, y'know, "Oh, ****! Oh! Oh, look at the noodles! Oh, ****! Don't say that, Johnny, just hear it. Oh, ****!" Sometimes they say 'shoot'. They can't kid me, man. 'Shoot' is 'shit' with two 'o's.

I’m guessing that all those quadruple asterisks are to stand for shit, although that is puzzling since shit is the first word of the paragraph. There is so much to play with in that paragraph. Maybe if I just say what they are, it will help me focus on the use I had in mind when I called it up. The middle class has not been comfortable with the word. Hear it, Johnny, but don’t say it. But the one I had in mind was, “shoot is just shit with two o’s.”

Is that right? Is shit, shoot with two o’s? Is shoot, shit with an i-? Is one of those forms real and the other a fraud? Which one? This brings us to the need for the 0 in the center of the scale. So I drop the casserole on the floor and I am angry and upset. Am I looking for a neutral denotation or a neutral affect equidistant between shit and shoot? Nope. Not.

How about if I say “Gajurgis!!”? You never know for sure, but I intend that as a nonce word—like the one time pad in the spy novels—that means nothing at all. On the other hand, that j- in the middle could be said with a lot of gusto. And you could kick off the whole word with a very robust g-. You could even hang onto the sibilant at the end if you didn’t feel purged yet. As a “word” you could say when you were really upset, it is harmless.

Which accounts, I think, for what such words are used so seldom. The boundaries of “good speech” and the sensibilities of “good people” are so clear that we may feel that we have not really expressed our anger if we have not violated at least one of them. Several violations would be better. “Shit!” as a response to dropping the casserole is really very good. It evokes excrement where you really don’t want it, i.e., in the kitchen, and it is really not something “nice people” say, which further expresses just how angry you are. Breaking out of the prison of “what you ought to say” helps you express your true feelings. “Gajurgis!” probably does not.