The Dirty Word in 43 Down

[Jesse Sheidlower]

On Fri, Apr 07, 2006 at 07:04:24AM -0700, Dave Wilton wrote:
> I did the puzzle on Monday and when I saw the word, my reaction was a bit
> different. I thought, "ooh, they are going to get letters about this one,"
> but the condom sense didn't even cross my mind. I know that "scumbag" is
> literally a condom, but I've never encountered this sense "in the wild." My
> thought that some would find it highly objectionable was due solely to the
> despicable person sense and the fact that it was very out of place--the
> puzzle never uses such words and, so, was surprising.

Yes, yet another thing I didn't address was how objectionable the
word would be _without_ the 'condom' sense--would "slimeball" or
"scuzzbag" be OK? But since no one seemed to object to the word
for any reason _other_ than the 'condom' implication, I didn't
think it was worth getting into.

Jesse Sheidlower
OED

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