formal equivalents for bad words

[RonButters at AOL.COM]

In a message dated 7/3/2002 7:33:05 PM, laurence.horn at YALE.EDU writes:

<< At 6:49 PM -0400 7/3/02, RonButters at AOL.COM wrote:
>In a message dated 7/3/02 9:16:07 AM, JMB at STRADLEY.COM writes:
>
><< "Fuck," in the sexual sense, has no formal equivalent >>
>
>as a verb, the formal equivalent is "have sexual intercourse with"

Not in "s/he really loves to have sexual intercourse with"

>as a noun, the formal equivalent is "sexual intercourse"

Not in "s/he's a good (talented, enthusiastic...) sexual intercourse"
or "that poor dumb sexual intercourse never knew what hit him/her"

Demand "fuck"; accept no substitutions! >>

Larry's first putative counterexample results simply from the fact that FUCK
has a somewhat broader morphosyntactic distribution than the formal
equivalent SEXUAL INTERCOURSE. In this case, one would have to say, "He's
good at sexual intercourse." But SEXUAL INTERCOURSE is still the formal
equivalent. (The fact that it lacks in connotative force is irrelevant; that
is usually the case between formal and informal equivalents, e.g., SHIT and
EXCREMENT.)

Larry's second putative counterexample is not a formal context, and therefore
a formal equivalent certainly is inappropriate. Indeed, one could argue that
FUCK in this context is a totally different meaning from FUCK 'sexual
intercourse'--indeed, it means something closer to what SHIT or ASSHOLE or
CLUCK would mean in this context. I would argue that the formal equivalent of
FUCK in this example (as well as SHIT or ASSHOLE or CLUCK) is FOOL.