It's not something I'm especially proud of, but I am who I am and I make no apologies for it. I grew up on military bases in Europe during the Cold War, and then for college I attended an engineering school. I have, for all intents and purposes, been around Men Who Curse pretty much all of my life, and as a result I have become quite proficient in salting my own vocabulary with profanity. In many ways this is kind of a survival skill, because in those environments I found I was not taken seriously -- or worse, was ignored -- if I didn't curse. Other cases were almost textbook examples of verbal abuse, and the only way I could defend myself was for me to engage in linguistic assault of my own.
But the other day I discovered I had created a new curse word, and it worried me. Have I turned my language skills to the dark side? Am I descending the slippery slope of obscenity in the wake of Lenny Bruce and Andrew "Dice" Clay? Will I one day end up in the fetal position, slowly rocking myself, as streams of filth disgorge themselves from my mouth like a highly literate Linda Blair?
Maybe I'll just go on to write for HBO.
The freshly-minted curse word, for those who are dying to know, is "Fuckity."
Usage:
- "Sweet fuckity, this dog is heavy."
- "Fuckity Ann and Andy, it's hot out here."
- "Fuckity-wuckity-bobbitty-boo."
- etc
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It's true. Palette once made Redd Foxx blush.
ReplyDeleteOh, a new word for my curse dictionary. What other excerpts from yours can I borrow?
ReplyDeleteI've always been fond of the lyrical cadence of "Cum guzzling gutter whore," but that's just the poet in me.
ReplyDeleteWhere do I find said, "whores?"
ReplyDeleteIn the gutter, of course. Duh.
ReplyDeleteOddly enough, I don't curse much myself. I drop a few F-bombs when I'm intoxicated, but other than that, my language is fairly clean.
ReplyDeleteEspecially the recent years, with a child around, I replaced pretty much everything with the cockney-ish slang cursing. It's gotten a 4 year old that grew up in Texas swearing "Oh, bother!" in frustration instead of words that could actually get her in trouble.
Might I suggest a couple of alterations to the following Wikipedia article?
ReplyDeletehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_word_%22fuck%22
You could add "fuckity" to the usages of it. And under the examples below that section, we could add:
"Popular Blogger Erin Palette of Lurking Rhythmically has recently admitted to using the less-oft heard form "fuckity."
Eh, it seems poor form for me to post a link to myself like that.
ReplyDeleteIf someone else were to do it, however, I would certainly not object.
In fact, I would giggle madly for some time...
I'd hate to burst your bubble, but fuckity is ancient. Mayan temples have been built on that word. Perhaps in your crazy cloistered nowhere town fuck has undergone fewer permutations, but out here in leftcoast America fuckity is common. A combo of fuck and rickety, a car running wrong is running fuckity. "Fords run fuckity." "This buick is pretty fuckity." It also has other applications. "These results are fuckity." "I think this data is fuckity." "Whats with all the fuckity shit?"
ReplyDeleteAnd as much as I love to vandalize wikipedia, Fuck is locked. Damn mods, making me sign up under false names just to simulate consensus that fuckity should be added.
And I hate to say it, but Eric Cartman uses "fuckity" in the South Park movie.
ReplyDeleteMuch as I hate to correct a fellow In Nomine dweller and all... it's truth. ;)
Does it help if I say I've not seen the South Park movie?
ReplyDeleteI'm sensing a case of parallel evolution, here.