Taboo replacements

[Rick Mc Callister]

	You're right that taboo replacement goes far beyond superstition
and reverence." Otherwise, we wouldn't expect taboo words in modern
societies e.g. "cock" is taboo in American English and male chicken are
known as "roosters"
	On the Columbia River east of Portland there is a tall erect
pinnacle known as "Rooster Rock" which was bowdlerized from the original
"Cock Rock"
	Yet we also see "resurrected taboo words" such as "jock," which
formerly meant "penis" and now means "athlete" [at least in America] and
even "jockette" for a female athlete

[snip]

>The linguistic process is just a prohibition against using a
>certain word.  It may be from reverence (the name of God),
>superstition (hunting, gambling), or disgusting or embarrassing
>(bodily functions) or distressing (death, etc.) connotations.
>Whether these would match the cultural anthropological
>definitions in all cases, I don't know (but I doubt it).
>Linguistic taboo is often a matter of good manners and manners
>change like everything else.

>One of the things that makes taboo a likely factor in the
>replacement of some animal names is the repeated shifts.  This is
>characteristic of linguistic taboo replacement.  The connection
>between the euphemism and the taboo term becomes so well
>established that a euphemism for the euphemism has to be found
>and so on ad infinitum.  I doubt that this is paralleled by
>cultural anthropological taboo.

>Bob Whiting
>whiting at cc.helsinki.fi