formal equivalents for bad words

[RonButters at AOL.COM]

In a message dated 7/8/2002 12:56:17 PM, JMB at STRADLEY.COM writes:

<<         And the formal equivalent for the transitive verb "to fuck"?  The
alleged formal equivalent is intransitive:  You can say that he is having
sexual intercourse with her, but you cannot say that he is sexually
intercoursing her.


John Baker >>

Exactly, you can say HE IS HAVING SEXUAL INTERCOURSE WITH HER (or HIM).

Formal and informal equivalents should not need to have exactly the same
morphosyntactic possibilities. If we require exact morphosyntactic
equivalence, wouldn't few pairs pass the test? ANUS and ASSHOLE come to mind,
though even these two cannot always appear in the same environments.