taboo vocabulary

[Jonathan Lighter]

On his hour-long TV show, "Jackie Gleason and His American Scene Magazine," (premiered in fall, 1962) Gleason used to make references to a pseudo-brand name, "Mother Fletcher's."

  JL



Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM> wrote:
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Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: Wilson Gray
Subject: Re: taboo vocabulary
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That reminds me of the use of "my friend" as a joking replacement for
"motherfucker" in St. Louis in the '50's.
Indeed, any two words whose initial letters were "m" and "f," e.g.
"mighty fine" could be so used. Apparently, this practice was once
quite widespread. I vaguely remember seeing it mentioned, with no
reference to St. Louis, in an article in a collection on black culture
published by the University of Illinois Press(?) some time in the
'70's. Hm. [There should be some better way of expressing the
foregoing. I quite clearly remember the mention. It's author, article
title, collection title, editor(s), publisher, and date of publication
of which I have only the vaguest recollection.]

-Wilson

On 6/6/06, Arnold M. Zwicky wrote:
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> Sender: American Dialect Society
> Poster: "Arnold M. Zwicky"
> Subject: taboo vocabulary
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> update on Language Log about taboo words in the press, with much
> mention of ADS-L and ADS-Lers:
>
> http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/003228.html
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>

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