Banned Words

[Dennis R. Preston]

Andrea,

I don't understand your visceral reaction to "paradigm," but "fubar" to
"foobar" would have occurred, I speculate, for the following reason. The
"fubar" writers (for you cannot distinguish these two in speech, of course)
are apparently aware of the etymology (acronymic "fucked up beyond all
recognition"). The "foobar" speakers have heard it, but do not know the
acronymic etymology.

dInIs

>Wait, wait!  You need to add "paradigm" to the list!!!  I was sitting in a
>very
>boring all-hands (all-thumbs?) meeting with some marketing person presenting
>some sort of ideological, ethereal viewpoint on the product line to the
>engineering staff (bad idea).  I turned to my coworker and said "If she says
>'paradigm' one more time, I'm leaving."  2 seconds later she said it for
>the 3rd
>(4th?) time in a 10 minute presentation.  Unfortunately I really couldn't
>leave,
>but I did tune her out completely.  The word was meaningless, she could have
>substituted "foobar"* and there would have been no difference.
>
>* Please note that although the military community has the acronym
>"fubar", the
>computing community uses "foobar".  Don't ask me why.
>
>Andrea
>--
>Andrea Vine, avine at eng.sun.com
>Necessity is the mother of strange bedfellows.
>-- Dr. Dave Farber (father of SNOBOL and one of the creators of Token Ring)
>
>Grant Barrett wrote:
>>
>> From Lake Superior University at http://www.lssu.edu/banished/2000.html
>>
>> Following is the entirety of the 2000 Banished Words List
>>
>...


Dennis R. Preston
Department of Linguistics and Languages
Michigan State University
East Lansing MI 48824-1027 USA
preston at pilot.msu.edu
Office: (517)353-0740
Fax: (517)432-2736